The Game Theory of Soccer Penalty Kicks
With the World Cup starting in two months, I think now is a great time to dig deeper into the game theory behind the soccer penalty kicks. Grew up watching soccer, I was always playing prediction games with my dad about where the kicker will shoot and where the goalie will dive. Now that I […]
A Network Analysis Approach to Understanding FOMO
FOMO stands for the “fear of missing out,” a common feeling where one believes that other people are living more fun and exciting lives. We’ve all experienced FOMO at some point in our lives, whether we’d like to admit it or not – from scrolling through our Instagram feeds, hearing stories from our friends about […]
World Cup and Graphs
With the World Cup 2022 coming around this winter in Qatar, let’s see how graph theory, or at least graph construction and how conclusions can be made from it to predict results. Predicting football or any sports match outcome has been a topic of interest for a very long time, especially since technically people can […]
Inductive Game Theory – Animal Combat
Inside of the animal kingdom, many believe that what guides the immediate decision making process of whether or not to combat another given animal is purely based on the conflict for resources. That is, animals generally decide to compete for resources such as food, water, shelter, and mates for the immediate gain of the resource. […]
Common Knowledge: Coordination Games Revisited
As we have learned in class, a coordination game is a game where all players get a positive payout if they choose the same strategy, but nobody gets any payout if a player chooses something different from the rest. The following table shows an example of a coordination game: If Player 1 chooses A and […]
Braess’ Paradox and ‘The Ewing Theory’
In game 2 of the 1999 NBA Eastern Conference Championships, Knicks star Patrick Ewing tore his Achilles tendon, resulting in him missing the remainder of the playoff series. Despite the public perception that the Knicks would quickly falter and lose the series, they rallied to win three of their next four games, qualifying for the […]
What could matching have to do with New York City High Schools?
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/07/nyregion/how-game-theory-helped-improve-new-york-city-high-school-application-process.html?searchResultPosition=1 Given how many New York City kids come to Cornell, we know how competitive it is to get accepted into a specialized high school there. Prior to the current system, students submitted their top 5 schools, hoping to get a match. While some high achieving students got to pick between more than one […]
Shipping’s Decarbonization: Prisoner’s Dilemma in Sustainable Development
Shipping’s Decarbonization: Prisoner’s Dilemma in Sustainable Development We discussed Prisoner’s dilemma when we first encountered game theory. The results of the game depend on the balance of detriment and altruism of each player. In real life, it has many applications, from business to politics. I recently read an article about the connection between the […]
Game Theory and Human Connections
The concept of a game within the context of networks used to seem beyond me and was not relevant to me in any way, but more relevant to a more generalized entity. However, it has dawned upon me that these types of analytical decisions happen within all of us on a daily basis, not just […]
Why the college you choose actually does matter
It’s fall, and while it’s a distant memory to many of us now, that means it’s college application time. The term CommonApp immediately brings back memories of stress and frustration and the anticipation we felt when a college emailed us about an update in regards to our application. It seemed that one click of a […]
keep looking »