OCR D2 2015 June — Question 6

Exam BoardOCR
ModuleD2 (Decision Mathematics 2)
Year2015
SessionJune
TopicGroups

6 At the final battle in a war game, the two opposing armies, led by General Rose, \(R\), and Colonel Cole, \(C\), are facing each other across a wide river. Each army consists of four divisions. The commander of each army needs to send some of his troops North and send the rest South. Each commander has to decide how many divisions (1,2 or 3) to send North. Intelligence information is available on the number of thousands of soldiers that each army can expect to have remaining with each combination of strategies. Thousands of soldiers remaining in \(R\) 's army \(C\) 's choice
\(R\) 's choice
123
1152530
2205015
3303515
Thousands of soldiers remaining in \(C\) 's army
\(C\) 's choice
\(R\) 's choice
123
1203510
2155020
3102540
  1. Construct a table to show the number of thousands of soldiers remaining in \(R\) 's army minus the number of thousands of soldiers remaining in \(C\) 's army (the excess for \(R\) 's army) for each combination of strategies. The commander whose army has the greatest positive excess of soldiers remaining at the end of the game will be declared the winner.
  2. Explain the meaning of the value in the top left cell of your table from part (i) (where each commander chooses strategy 1). Hence explain why this table may be regarded as representing a zero-sum game.
  3. Find the play-safe strategy for \(R\) and the play-safe strategy for \(C\). If \(C\) knows that \(R\) will choose his play-safe strategy, which strategy should \(C\) choose? One of the strategies is redundant for one of the commanders, because of dominance.
  4. Draw a table for the reduced game, once the redundant strategy has been removed. Label the rows and columns to show how many divisions have been sent North. A mixed strategy is to be employed on the resulting reduced game. This leads to the following LP problem:
    Maximise \(\quad M = m - 25\)
    Subject to \(\quad m \leqslant 15 x + 25 y + 35 z\)
    \(m \leqslant 45 x + 20 y\)
    \(x + y + z \leqslant 1\)
    and
  5. Interpret what \(x , y\) and \(z\) represent and show how \(m \leqslant 15 x + 25 y + 35 z\) was formed. A computer runs the Simplex algorithm to solve this problem. It gives \(x = 0.5385 , y = 0\) and \(z = 0.4615\).
  6. Describe how this solution should be interpreted, in terms of how General Rose chooses where to send his troops. Calculate the optimal value for \(M\) and explain its meaning. Elizabeth does not have access to a computer. She says that at the solution to the LP problem \(15 x + 25 y + 35 z\) must equal \(45 x + 20 y\) and \(x + y + z\) must equal 1 . This simplifies to give \(y + 7 z = 6 x\) and \(x + y + z = 1\).
  7. Explain why there can be no valid solution of \(y + 7 z = 6 x\) and \(x + y + z = 1\) with \(x = 0\). Elizabeth tries \(z = 0\) and gets the solution \(x = \frac { 1 } { 7 }\) and \(y = \frac { 6 } { 7 }\).
  8. Explain why this is not a solution to the LP problem.