Suppose that a parent brings home from a trip $2n$ gifts of roughly  
equal value for his/her two children. The children get to choose one  
at a time which gifts they want. What is the fairest way to do this?  
For instance, if $n=1$ then clearly one child chooses first  
(determined by a coin flip) and the other child chooses second. If we  
denote the children by 0 and 1, then this method is described by the  
choice sequence 01 (assuming, as I do from now on, that 0 choose  
first). Now suppose $n=2$. The choice sequence 0101 is clearly biased  
toward 0, since 0 has the first choice at the beginning and after both  
have chosen one gift. The fairest sequence by any reasonable criterion  
is 0110. What about general $n$?  If $n=2^k$, an argument can be made  
that the fairest sequence is the first $n$ terms of the Thue-Morse  
sequence  
(http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Thue-MorseSequence.html). Another  
argument can be made that the fairest sequence $a_1,\dots, a_n$ is one  
that maximizes the value of $k$ for which the polynomial  
$(1-2a_1)x^{n-1} + (1-2a_2)x^{n-2}+\cdots+(1-2a_n)$ and its first $k$  
derivatives vanish at $x=1$. (The Thue-Morse sequence does not have  
this property, though I cannot recall where I once saw this.)   


Has this problem received any attention? What is a reference for the   
problem of maximizing $k$?