Can You Parent Your Kids Using Game Theory?
A recent book released by Paul Raeburn and Kevin Zollman, entitled The Game Theorists’s Guide to Parenting: How the Science of Strategic Thinking Can Help You Deal with the Toughest Negotiators You Know—Your Kids, seems to think so. Many unconventional parenting skills have been introduced throughout the years, from giving kids complete freedom to isolating children, but […]
The Strengths of Weak Ties vs. Stranger Danger
In class, we discussed the famous “strength of weak ties” hypothesis proposed by the sociologist Mark Granovetter in 1973. By interviewing people how they discovered their new jobs, he surprisingly found that many people collected employment information which leaded to their current jobs from “acquaintances” instead of close friends. The word “acquaintances” represents the concept […]
Tit for Tat- Trump’s Strategy
The upcoming presidential election has brought with it a storm of controversy. With the candidates often using personal attacks against each other, each has been forced to adopt a strategy for the political arena. Donald Trump describes himself as a “counter-puncher”, according to the Rolling Stones article “What Game Theory Tells Us About Donald Trump”. […]
The Roommate’s Dilemma
Figuring out how to coexist with a roommate can be a tricky process, especially if you’ve never had to live with one before. Luckily for me, my roommate here in Ithaca is my brother; we’re both students up here, very close, and far from home, so having each other is really nice and comforting. There […]
Game Theory applied to the Greek Debt Crisis
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33254857 This interesting article starts out describing the Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis expertise in Game Theory. Essentially, as described in class, game theory uses games to study behavior and to make decisions. The author of the BBC article, Marcus Miller, wants to see if that will be a predictor of the Eurozone Negotiations for a bailout. […]
The Strength of Weak Ties & The 2016 Presidential Election
The notion of tie strength is especially prevalent in current events shaping this year’s presidential election. Both presidential nominees Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have been floating around options of members to join their presidential cabinet. Leadership, especially that of an entire nation such as the United States, is a collaborative process. Both Trump and […]
Combating Traffic through Game Theory and Technology
In large cities with expansive transportation infrastructures, intuition suggests adding roads would eliminate traffic congestion. This idea turns out to be false according to a concept we learned about in class recently – Braess’ Paradox. This idea states that when you add a road to an existing network to eliminate traffic, this new route actually […]
Game Theory and Parenting
In the NYTimes article, When a Child Thinks Life is Unfair, Use Game Theory, journalist KJ Dell’Antonia suggests applying game theory strategies in parenting. This idea is taken from Paul Raeburn, a co-author of “The Game Theorist’s Guide to Parenting”, in which Raeburn argues that “applying theory strategies helps children make ‘fair’ decisions” since children always […]
Using Game Theory to Help Children Think Life Is Not “Unfair”
When siblings fight for something in common, they always think life is not fair. When one of the siblings get more snacks than the other, the other one would say it’s not fair. When both of the siblings run to hit the elevator button, the one who doesn’t hit it would think it’s not […]
Cooperation in Animal Societies explained by Game Theory
Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection seems, at first glance, to encourage selfish behavior. “[N]atural selection is ruled by the survival of the fittest, so one might expect that selfish strategies benefiting the individual would be most likely to persist.” Interestingly, as the article states, it is possible for individuals to act in their own […]
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