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Sept 2010 Ques 12

P

Pratik

Member
The logic for the creation of states is not clear. The answer has clearly mentioned that there are 4 states and not 5 states ( as per comment)

My question is that incase there are 01 snakes the owner will not order for another set of snakes and will wait for the stock to be come zero. Also from a Markov chain perspective when do we order the next set of 4 snakes...Therefore why not include another state with zero snakes. Therefore at the end of the day if there are 0 snakes a fresh order is placed. The state spaces then becomes 4 (at start of day), 3, 2, 1 and zero... The solution may very well be developed out of here too.

My question is why are we using 4 states with 1 being the lowest...
The second issue is that in a typical question if the logic is sound and we do create additional steps why would my results differ... Will I be penalized if I am producing an extra state but giving reasoning for the same.

Thanks in advance.
With regards,

Pratik
 
You are asked to model the number of snakes in the shop in the morning when the shop opens.

If at the end of the previous day there are no snakes in the shop, the owner orders 4 more snakes, and we're told that these are delivered "the following morning before the shop opens". So there will be 4 snakes in the shop at opening time.

Since the new snakes are delivered before the shop opens, the shop will never open with 0 snakes in it, so including a state 0 in your model would be incorrect, and I would expect you to be penalised here. Though you should be awarded method marks for your work in the later parts of the question based on your incorrect model.

In other questions, there may be different ways of setting up the model to achieve the desired outcome. In that case marks would be awarded for all valid alternatives
 
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