
Rainbow, Binary, Debt Friendship Bracelets - zmanian
https://medium.com/@alizauf/rainbow-binary-debt-friendship-bracelets-24b04caf3479
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benkuykendall
Hmmm... How about a one's complement system? For example if A owed B 24
dollars, A would wear the bands 1100111 = -24 and B would wear 0011000 = 24.
This way, they would only need 7 bands between the two of them, yet each
person would know how much they owed or were owed. Also, no matter the
balance, each of the bands would be worn by one of them, so there would be no
need to carry around extra bands.

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thelema314
I found the redundancy of having the same number stored on both also
unnecessary, and a scheme that just reorganized where the bracelets are seems
better. The "friendship" component of having identical bracelets is lost, but
information density is certainly improved. Instead of considering this as
one's complement, just give the right bracelet sum to one person and all the
rest of the bracelets to the other.

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rexpop
This is the cutest thing I've ever seen on HN.

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whatshisface
Something about this feels off, but I had to think about it for a bit before I
realized why.

The $63 dollar debt limit is acceptable because the random walk will
(apparently) almost never go over this number. That is, the difference between
this and nothing is at most $63 dollars worth of avoided inequality.

What kind of relationship would someone have to have in order to not want to
give their significant other a gift of $63 dollars, total over the entire
relationship?

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belovedeagle
The point was that the walk isn't random, and that if it were unguided, the
participants believed it would be unbounded.

Presumably it's easy to stay within $63 when the decisions are guided.

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roel_v
But how so isn't it random? The article doesn't say, unless I misunderstood.

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shaftway
Isn't it painfully obvious? They're discussing joint events, like dinner.
Whoever owes money in the relationship pays.

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roel_v
I guess I'm daft, but if they'd just flip a coin each time on who pays, in the
long run they'd each pay the same, if each payment event were to be random
(let's even say within an upper limit, to keep the 'in the long run' within
the lifespan of their relationship). Why wouldn't the dollar amounts of these
events be essentially random?

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eru
> …just trade off paying and call it good? [...]

They could flip a coin every time. That would take care of their objection.

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JackFr
Rainbow binary debt friendship bracelets. The commas are unnecessary. In fact
the title seems to indicate rainbow friendship bracelets, binary friendship
bracelets and debt friendship bracelets are all things, which is not the
author's intent.

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dang
I think it can be read either way, so let's leave the author her commas.

