User:Criveros0248/enes100/poppit

Link to project cjf team page.

Write problem statement
Develop the most effective chunking strategy to pop the greatest number of balloons during a game of Poppit.

Assign Task1
My individual task for this week was to play Poppit repeatedly and record my results. I used this data to come up with numerous hypothetical strategies to pop the most balloons during a game of Poppit.

Hypothetical Strategies

 * Starting in the top-left corner and working horizontally from left to right to eliminate individual rows.
 * Work from top to bottom to eliminate individual columns.
 * Eliminate chunks (balloon clusters) by color and size. For instance, start with primary colors (R, B, Y) and continue with (P, G); while at the same time focusing on chunk size (biggest to smallest).
 * Random clicking strategy. No planning involved; just random clicking around the game screen.
 * A combination of the first three strategies. It might take a long time to test, but I think it has promising results.

Compare actual work done to Task1
My initial goal was to play Poppit at least 200 times, instead I ended up playing just 50 games during the weekend. The problem was that I ended up spending too much time on creating hypothetical strategies and analyzing their possible results. My goal was to create different strategies that would provide me with the most diverse output, in other words, I wanted to develop strategies so unique from each other that would give me comparable results.

Week1 Narrative
This week I worked on testing my strategies and concluding which of the five was the best one. I decided to test my strategies with 10 trials each. The following is a spreadsheet illustrating my testing results: First, I tested the rows strategy and found out average results (10s and 20s). I also noticed that it was necessary to go back towards my point of origin if new opportunities for popping balloons were given. Second, I tested my columns strategy and found out poor results mostly in the 20s or 30s. I also found it beneficial for my score to use the UNDO button if needed. Later, I tested the color strategy and found average results. For this strategy, I found out the importance of taking my time and planning ahead for future moves.

Then, I tested my random clicking strategy. This strategy is characterized by the fast pacing of every game. There was no order nor thinking to it; I just clicked rapidly and moved the pointer around the game's screen to pop balloons. Obviously, my results were the worst for this strategy, but not so bad to discard them. Overall, I got results within the 30s and 40s. Finally, my strategy combination (combination of the first three strategies) worked the best and provide me with the best results. My average for this strategy was below 10. Its disadvantages were the long game times and thinking/planning ahead involved.

Week1 Peer Review
Most of my interaction with team member "CR" was in the classroom. Provided good feedback that helped us develop strategies to achieve our final goal. Individual work looks good.


 * Fab4187 01:42, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Your work looks great. It was good working with you. Jhasslinger 01:40, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Assign Task2
I will help on completing and editing the Team Project Page for my team.

Complete Project Page
CJF Team project Page

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