Class demos, assignments,and fun

• Game theory humor:
  • Sergiu Hart
  • Mike Shor's Game Theory Cartoons

• Recursion
  To understand subgame perfect equilibrium, you must understand recursion.
  To understand recursion, you must understand recursion.
  This Wikipedia article, with a little help from Sponge Bob Squarepants, might help a little more.
• The Game of Nim
  • Pearls before Swine An online game of Nim.
  • Ultimate Nim Explanation of Nim strategy by Matthew Shao.
  • Nim . Wikipedia article with further citations.

• Survivor:Thailand
  Click on the camera icon "More Action at the Immunity Challenge" (requires RealPlayer) and think about the play of the "Take the Flags Game".

  Basic rules: There are 21 flags; players must take 1,2,or 3 flags at each turn. The team that takes the last flag wins the challenge.

  Who has the winning strategy, the first or second mover?
  What is the strategy?

• Princess Bride
  Which goblet should Vizzini choose?

  Brief plot summary: Vizzini, the henchman of the evil prince Humperdinck, has kidnapped Princess Buttercup. Our hero, Westley (the Man in Black), has caught up with him and challenged him to a battle of wits -- there are two goblets of wine and some poison involved.

  Duel of Wits The script for the critical scene from beginning to end.
  (You can rent the DVD from the Highland Library or most video rental places)

  
  Vizzini thinks a good deal about his strategy. Could he have come up with a better one?

• Blondes, Brunettes and John Nash
  Simon P. Anderson and Maxim Enders, " A Beautiful Blonde: A Nash Coordination Game, " working paper, July 2002.
  The authors begin the paper with the words of the New Yorker review:
  "If you think the title stinks, try the movie."

  They go on to explain why the game theory in the movie stinks, and why the problem is interesting nevertheless.

• Hal Varian, in his column in the New York Times titled "You've Seen the Movie. Now just exactly what was it that John Nash had on his Beautiful Mind?" (April 11, 2002), discusses the blond-brunette game in the movie, and points out that none of the actors wondered for a second what the blond or brunettes had on their mind, thereby ignoring the fundamental lesson of game theory.
  To find the column, go to Proquest, choose the ProQuest Newspapers, hit Search, and type "Varian AND Nash" into the search box.