The Hunger Games: Life, Death and Game Theory
Here is the article: https://www.wired.com/2012/04/probability-and-game-theory-in-the-hunger-games/
One of the most popular series, The Hunger Games trilogy, one of the most popular series in the 2010s, ignited the boom in dystopian fiction. The story’s background is that there is a nation with a capital and 12 districts. Every year, all districts must send a boy and a girl, aged 12 to 18, to a televised battleground known as the Hunger Games. During the game, these children are expected to fight to the death until there is only one person alive.
Besides the story’s brutality, there are interesting, mathematical ways to analyze some situations in the book. For example, statistically, as the child age, their chances of being chosen for the Game increase. This increase is also non-linear, as the rate also increases with age. This is because the system is a lottery in which a boy’s and a girl’s name are picked randomly in a pool of names. Every year past age 12, the child has to be added an extra time. So by the time a child is 16, they will have their names inputted 4 times into the lottery, which makes them 4 times more likely to be chosen than a 12-year-old child.
Launching off the point of probability, the idea of decision theory comes into play, which might be relevant to the class (we have not covered this material yet). The families of the child can choose to input their child’s name into the lottery an extra time in return for more food. Perhaps families of certain demographics will risk their children’s lives for a more comfortable living situation.
Although the article did not analyze this, I believe a family’s decision can also be tied to game theory. Although I cannot completely calculate the specific risks/reward ratio of inputting their child’s name (this depends on many factors, such as the desperation levels for food and the number of children in a certain district), I believe that there exist certain families that could benefit from risking their children. The risk of their children being picked can sometimes be lower depending on their age, and the risk of dying of starvation might be a greater issue at hand.
Despite the complexity of the lottery and the risk/reward factor of a family’s decision, the game theory plays a factor in the actual Hunger Games as well. In many cases, the children will decide to group up with other children initially to form some sort of alliance. They are basically trusting each other until the point where all outside enemies are dead. When it comes to sleep, each child has the choice to sleep and trust other people not to kill them or to not sleep. Since the article does not display the graph anymore, I will create a straightforward one based on my knowledge of game theory. Pretend you are one of the children in the Hunger Games; this situation can be summarized in the following table:
| Don’t Sleep (Others) | Sleep (Others) | |
| Don’t Sleep (You) | Tired, tired | Tired, killed |
| Sleep (You) | Killed, tired | Possibly killed by another group, Possibly killed by another group |
This table includes the possible outcomes depending on a child’s choices. If no one in the group sleeps, then everyone will end up tired. However, if everyone sleeps but you, then you could kill everyone else to get closer to victory. If you sleep and no one else sleeps, then they could kill you. If everyone sleeps, then there is a risk of being killed by another group (that is why someone should stay up to watch out). In this case, the best possible choice for you might be to stay up until you physically can’t. The alternative would be the risk of dying, either due to other members of the group or due to another group. If you stay up, but others sleep, you can kill them to get ahead.
The ideas in this article connect very well with what we are currently learning in class, Game Theory. The examples that I’ve provided are not comprehensive, as there are many more variables to survival. For example, what if you get too tired staying up and die of exhaustion? What if you get too tired and lose a fight because of a lack of focus? These are variables that should be considered when making a well-thought-out choice. Despite these complexities in decision-making, the possibility of connecting such a “life and death” decision to a well-calculated theory is both daunting and inspiring.