Thin k in g a na ly t i ca lly
Figure 1:
Four fighters enter
the fray, only one
can win. Who is it?
Fighters!
By John Toczek
John Toczek is the senior director
of Decision Support and Analytics for
ARAMARK Corporation in the Global
Operational Excellence group. He
earned a bachelor of science degree
in chemical engineering at Drexel
University (1996) and a master’s
degree in operations research from
Virginia Commonwealth University
(2005). He is a member of INFORMS.
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Four different fighters are having an all-out battle to
determine who among them is the strongest. Figure 1
shows the four fighters: Allan, Barry, Charles and Dan.
Each fighter has varying attack and health abilities. At
the start of the battle, they have differing health points:
Allan has 10, Barry has 12, Charles has 16 and Dan has
18. Also, each fighter has differing attack points: Allan has
four, Barry has three, Charles has two and Dan has one.
The battle takes place over multiple rounds, each
round consisting of a single attack. In each round, one
random attacker and one random defender are chosen.
When the attacker attacks a defender, the defender loses health points in the amount equivalent to the attacker’s attack points. For example, if Allan is the attacker
and Barry is the defender, Barry would lose four health
points.
The fighters continue to randomly attack and defend
in subsequent rounds until there is only one fighter left,
who is then declared the winner. A fighter is removed
from the battle when his life points become zero (or less).
Question: Which fighter is most likely to win the
battle?
Send your answer to [email protected] by Jan.
15, 2015. The winner, chosen randomly from correct answers, will receive a $25 Amazon Gift Card. Past questions can be found at puzzlor.com. ❙
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