A Probabilistic Analysis of the Game of the Goose
Abstract
We analyze the traditional board game the Game of the Goose. We are particularly interested in the probabilities of the different players winning, and we show that we can determine these probabilities exactly for up to six players and using simulation for any number of players. Our original motivation to investigate this game came from progress in stochastic process theories, which prompted the question of whether such methods are capable of dealing with well-known probabilistic games. As these games have large state spaces, this is not trivial. As a side effect we find that some common wisdom about the game is not true.
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© 2016, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.
History
Submitted: 25 August 2014
Accepted: 1 April 2015
Published online: 4 February 2016
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