Game 4: COVID-90: The Counting of Vacancies in Dormitories

Last week on dormspam-the-game, you tried to help the Missouri Institute of Technology decide how many students could come back. After all was said and done, sophia23, guessing 1323 (within 1.7 of 90% of the average), has won and will compete in the final game! In second place was beeshi, and kcard placed third. Learn more about our winner here.

Honorable Mentions:

Best Poem: reflynn for The white sun sets behind the mountains / The Yellow River flows into the sea / To see a thousand mile view / Go up another floor. It is one of the gamemasters' mom's favorites :)

Most saddening statement: sweidman for "whew I made the right decision about not being a course 14, tg" >:(

Happy birthday to maggallina! You're the same age as one of the gamemasters now.

If you can't view the results below, here is a Google Sheet of them.

The Missouri Institute of Taxidermy is determining how many students they expect to be on campus next semester. There are 4,000 students at the Institvte, but no one knows exactly how many students will want to live in dormitories.

Because asking students if they’d like to come back is too simple, MIT is instead asking each student to guess how many of their peers will want on-campus housing. As students tend to overestimate, MIT will then prepare for 90% of the mean guess to come back.

Your goal is to guess exactly how many beds MIT will provide; in essence, guessing 90% of the mean of all guesses. Your score will be the absolute value of the difference between your guess and 90% of the mean guess. Lower scores are better. 

As a tiebreaker, guess what the standard deviation of all guesses is. Once again, your score will be the absolute value of the difference between your guess and 90% of the mean guess. 

The deadline for playing is Thursday, July 9 at 12pm ET. Results and Game 5 will be released on Sunday, July 12 at ~12pm ET.

Play here for your chance at honor, fame, glory, and of course, prizes.