Rules (the version I learned as a kid):
1. Give each player half of a deck of cards face down.
2. Each player turns over a card.
- The player with the larger card adds both cards to the bottom of their pile
3. If the cards are the same, then it is War!
- Each player adds three face down cards.
4. Repeat steps 2-3 as needed.
1. Give each player half of a deck of cards face down.
2. Each player turns over a card.
- The player with the larger card adds both cards to the bottom of their pile
3. If the cards are the same, then it is War!
- Each player adds three face down cards.
4. Repeat steps 2-3 as needed.
It's a great way to practice numeracy and comparing values while being simple enough to learn in a minute. He loved getting Aces and was sad when he started to lose (I have no control over this son!). It got me thinking, what is the minimum numbers of Aces needed to have a statistical advantage?
The trick for this code, was to make it optimized so it could run as many times as I wanted without using up too much memory or taking too long. Additionally, with a couple of data type changes, it became all the more important for me to brainstorm before what my program would look like. It is very tempting to jump right in but with a dynamically typed language like Python you will save a lot of headaches if you plan it out (for more resources on designing programs with your students I direct you to the Bootstrap Math Curriculum/Program).
Change
So what question will you use technology to solve?
The trick for this code, was to make it optimized so it could run as many times as I wanted without using up too much memory or taking too long. Additionally, with a couple of data type changes, it became all the more important for me to brainstorm before what my program would look like. It is very tempting to jump right in but with a dynamically typed language like Python you will save a lot of headaches if you plan it out (for more resources on designing programs with your students I direct you to the Bootstrap Math Curriculum/Program).
Change
num_games to see how many Aces are needed to have a statistical advantage and increase game_limit if you want to enable a game to go on longer (memory warning: some go on for a long time!). I'm really interested to see what fun discoveries you can make from the data in wins_num_hands.So what question will you use technology to solve?
from random import shuffle wins_num_aces = [0,0,0,0,0] #Each win, keep track of original number of aces wins_num_hands = [] card_values = {'2':2, '3':3, '4':4, '5':5, '6':6, ' 7':7, '8':8, '9':9, '10':10, 'J':11, 'Q':12, 'K':13, 'A':14} #Ace is highest value def createDeck(): deck = [] the_card_values = card_values #local variable for faster processing for suit in range(0, 4): #iterate through the dictionary 4 times for card in the_card_values: deck.append(card) shuffle(deck) #From the random module return deck class player: def __init__(self, halfDeck): self.hand = halfDeck self.num_aces = self.hand.count('A') #Count aces in hand self.game_over = False def nextCard(self): try: return self.hand.pop() #Returns next card if any left except IndexError: if self.game_over == False: winning_num_aces = 4 - self.num_aces wins_num_aces[winning_num_aces] += 1 self.game_over = True return None def addCards(self, current_hand): #Add the cards to the bottom of your hand self.hand = current_hand + self.hand def warGame(): deck = createDeck() game_limit = 10000 p1 = player(deck[:26]) #split deck in half p2 = player(deck[-26:]) current_hand = [] the_card_values = card_values times = 0 while True: times += 1 if times < game_limit: #restart game if going on too long try: #Fails if there are no more cards left current_hand.extend([p1.nextCard(), p2.nextCard()]) p1_card = the_card_values[current_hand[-2]] #2nd to last p2_card = the_card_values[current_hand[-1]] #Last card if p1_card == p2_card: for i in range(0,3): current_hand.extend([p1.nextCard(),p2.nextCard()]) elif p1_card > p2_card: p1.addCards(current_hand) current_hand = [] elif p1_card < p2_card: p2.addCards(current_hand) current_hand = [] except KeyError: #If a player runs out of cards (None) wins_num_hands.append(times) #Keeping track of data break return False #Game is over else: break return True #Too long a game, restart numGames = 100 #Number of games to play while numGames > 0: current_game = True while (current_game == True): current_game = warGame() numGames -= 1 print 'Wins with 0 Aces:',wins_num_aces[0] print 'Wins with 1 Ace: ',wins_num_aces[1] print 'Wins with 2 Aces:',wins_num_aces[2] print 'Wins with 3 Aces:',wins_num_aces[3] print 'Wins with 4 Aces:',wins_num_aces[4] print 'Number of hands:', wins_num_hands
