Game Theory
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/05/29/game-theory-2
What’s so cool about game theory is how it affects literally everything a person does. Every decision that a person makes can be determined using game theory. Decisions can be simplified and analyzed so that you know whether or not they were actually the proper decision to make. What is so cool is that it makes things that were once difficult to analyze, because you could only look at it qualitatively, a quantitative touch. This can yield stunning results. For example, what the article talks about is the case of a basketball player, named Iverson, who was considered one of the best. Using game theory, and by analyzing this player’s decisions on the court, as well as everyone else’s decisions, they created a ranking of players in the league. Iverson, in the year he was named MVP, was ranked 91st. This is obviously a huge discrepancy. So, what for me, the big question becomes, is, what is closer to correct? Our qualitative rankings or the rankings that game theory can analyze?
My diplomatic answer is that there are definitely pluses for both ways of analyzing. The opinions of basketball experts definitely can’t all be that horribly askew. I feel that looking at stats can definitely provide a lot of insight into who is an effective player on the team, and actually contributing to the win, however, as with most of these sports that involve such complex interactions, it is difficult to turn it into a quantitative science. Just as many experiments and projects are sabotaged by human error, so is the science of sport. So, while applying game theory to sport can reveal facts and ideas that nobody else had seen, it also may just not be that reliable, because of the human error that is in all sport.