Probability and Game Theory in The Hunger Games
We discussed Game theory in lectures. The article dives into the game theory seen in the book and movie remake of The Hunger Games because it follows the rule that one player’s decisions affect what the other player will do. The author talks about the game theory of sleeping and compares it to the prisoner’s dilemma as discussed in class. In this model the two options are don’t sleep or sleep.
A Table was provided displaying the outcomes.
| Don’t Sleepall | Sleepall | |
| Don’t Sleep1 | Tired, Tired | Kill, Killed |
| Sleep1 | Killed, Kill | Rested, Rested |
Here subscript “1″ refers to any member of the coalition and subscript “all” refers to all other members of the coalition.
As in the Prisoner’s Dilemma where it can be seen that the prisoners are better off both not confessing, in The Hunger Games the contestants are better off both sleeping. However if they sleep then they are vulnerable to anybody who doesn’t sleep. The author brings up thoughtful observations and doubt about why any of the contestants would get sleep in a game that requires them to kill other contestants to win. One may assume that similar to the Prisoner’s Dilemma players are likely to both get no sleep, which would be analogous to both suspects confessing. I found it interesting to see how a famous game theory example can be seen in this famous book. It helps to show how applicable game theory can be to a myriad of decision making scenarios.
Link:
http://www.wired.com/2012/04/probability-and-game-theory-in-the-hunger-games/