Game Theory applied to Practical Problems
Harsh Pencil and I were talking before the debate last Wednesday, and the issue of Game Theory came up. Given that Mr. Pencil is an economist and I am not, I'll leave it to you, Gentle Reader, to ascertain which of the two of us first uttered the phrase 'Game Theory'. Yet, as usual, the conversation was interesting and enlightening.
I today discovered, via The Corner, a more practical application of Game Theory that I thought I'd share. Hopefully, Harsh Pencil can weigh in with his analysis.
I today discovered, via The Corner, a more practical application of Game Theory that I thought I'd share. Hopefully, Harsh Pencil can weigh in with his analysis.
posted by festivus | 2/09/2006 10:51:00 PM
I read that paper yesterday. (It's a game theoretic study of leaving the toilet seat up or down). My main conclusion is why it's a good thing that most of the action in game theory moved from math to economics. The author, a mathematician, simply screws it up. When economists do game theory, they see it as a tool for analysing conflict. (My former colleague, Roger Myerson wrote a textbook called "Game Theory: Analysis of Conflict"). This yoyo goes to all the trouble of formally setting up the problem between a co-habitating man and woman and then tries to figure out what's fair, as opposed to what we should expect to happen (as any good economist would do). Feh!
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