Simulating Chutes and Ladders in Python | Hacker News Reader

Simulating Chutes and Ladders in Python

jakevdp.github.io

126 pointswyldfire16 comments

From the article:

> "Think of this as a blog post version of a dad joke: my primary goal is not originality, but self-entertainment, and if anyone else finds it entertaining that's just an added bonus."

We need more of this. Exploration just for the sake of exploration. I love to hear and read about these types of feats.

It takes many iterations of doing the repetitive and boring in order to finally stumble upon novelty. The canvas of life has to be explored and re-explored, the dirt tilled over every season, before something new pops up from the ground.

[edit] spelling

I think you may find my blog[1] interesting. It only has two posts, but my intention is to capture that spirit into exploratory technical writing.

[1]: https://applecrazy.github.io/blog/

It is why I love Jupyter!

This is fascinating.

> And then, at some point, it clicked: Chutes and Ladders [...] can be modeled as a Markov process!

I know some basics about Markov processes, and after reading that and watching the visualization, I thought Yes, what's so special about it?

Well, the author uses this property to decompose the complicated and chaotic system into a set of understandable characteristics. Every once in a while, I'm astonished about how some complex system can be reasoned about in sn organized way, and that is one such example.

I also didn't realize how useful Markov processes were in terms of allowing things to be analyzed. The interesting things start at the Shannon entropy section and continue to the end. Especially impressive is how elegantly stationary states can be found.

An old similar approach: http://www.datagenetics.com/blog/november12011/

'snakes', goddamnit.

Hehe I know! Calling it "chutes" is so weird. The wikipedia page is fascinating. I had no idea it's so ancient, or Indian. "The historic version had root in morality lessons, where a player's progression up the board represented a life journey complicated by virtues (ladders) and vices (snakes). ... The most widely known edition of Snakes and Ladders in the United States is Chutes and Ladders released by Milton Bradley in 1943. The playground setting replaced the snakes, which were received negatively by children at the time." (!)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snakes_and_Ladders

Aren't the snakes supposed to be received negatively? i.e. you don't want to land on them?!

American kids were (are?) such wimps. Australia has actual dangerous snakes (ones you're likely to encounter in fact) and we legitimately react negatively to them, but still, our game is called "snakes and ladders."

That's not fair. America has dangerous snakes too; I grew up in a place where rattlesnake (and scorpion) encounters were not uncommon. And water moccasins are common in other parts of the country.

Take a look at the venomous snakes page on wikipedia and North America barely shows up while Australia is at the top of the leaderboard. And that's not even getting into spiders, platypus, jellies, -- even venomous seashells! And of course drop bears, scourge of unwitting tourists.

Now it's true that I'm in the US at the moment and I did vaccinate my dog against rattlesnake. But the US has about 15X the population of AUS -- we like to have something to crow about. So please don't rain on our parade, even on legitimate grounds.

Well.. 1/2 the famous actors in Hollywood since the 90s seem to be Australian. (I could name dozens.) Which is something.. My gripe is that not only Aussies have to put up with hearing them do fake US accents in movies close to 100% of the time, but whenever there's an Australian in a US movie, they get someone from the US to play them. Arghh. As if there's no Aussie actors there! ha. Maybe they're all too famous. I guess it sounds convincing to a US audience. It must do. But OMG it sounds so fake to Australians. It just sounds like someone from the US trying and failing to do an Aussie accent. e.g. there was one in Fargo series, and it was about the only bad thing about Tropic Thunder. Please don't do this. At this rate, soon there'll be a movie with Australians doing US accents in the starring roles, with supporting cast of US actors trying to sound Australian.. Mark my words.

p.s. Is that the first mention of drop bears on HN? Well done :-)

https://australianmuseum.net.au/drop-bear

Australians are just wanna-be Americans with a serious case of British-cringe mixed in. Don't take it too seriously mate, we're all part of the same 5-eyes New World Order now, anyway.

And all the bad guys are Brits.

Still waiting for the venomous cows to evolve in AUS...

Especially since it's written in Python. I mean, duh.

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