Saturday, March 31, 2007
Even a 5 year old knows game theory
Before I rattle off this story (which some of you must have heard by now), I like to bring attention to the "pet" on the right. Please play with it when you visit my blog as I probably won't be spending too much time on it. Of course, I am doing free advert for the creator, and if you peeps ever want to adopt the pet which I have on my blog, feel free to click the link. (do drop me a msg on msn or whatever if you don't know how to embed them).
Ironically, a couple of days ago, my mum found a lost dog and brought it home. For a brief 24 hour, I had a maltese. Good news is, I think its much better than the dogs which some of my friends have. One of the dogs look totally crazy, the one other look totally stupid. This is small, white and hairy and well trained. It knows how to beg for food by hopping around on 2 legs. Not too bad. But of course, in less than a day, the owner collected it back. So no more dogs. Being me, actually, I am more than happy that the gone is. a) i didn't like to leash the dog up. b) so when i am alone with the dog, i let it out of the provisional cage. c) so whilst i was doing my work in the morning, i got stared by the dog which makes me feel totally awkward, i like privacy and i don't like it if my privacy is disturbed, even by animals.
the main story, i saw a 5 year old kid on the train yesterday. i cannot help but comment about this kid cause he has just trigger so much in me. being a typical 5 year old, he wants his mum to play scissors paper stone with him. he wanted to win, so he told his mum to put stone. round 1: the boy puts paper and the mum puts scissors (horrible mum right? cheated his own son). so the boy was rather unhappy that his mum lied. he told his mum to put stone again. round 2: the mum once again cheated, put scissors. Guess what the boy put? stone! oh my god, so smart, he knew his mum is gonna cheat on him and pre empted it.
on hindsight, i realise alot of thought has behind that "stone" which the boy put for round 2. what he has just did was actually part of game theory. something which economists have won noble prizes for, but in actual fact its something which many of us already know. Realise that in the above mentioned situation, the boy should always put stone regardless of what the mum does. cos stone gives him the best out come. If the mum listens to him and put stone, he draws, but if the mum defects and put scissors, he wins. let's examine another combination, if the boy puts paper. if the mum listens, he wins and if the mum defects he loses. If the boy puts scissors, if the mum listens, he loses, and if the mum defects he draws. I didn't realise it until the boy showed me. WOW. actually, upon doing that, i realised there is a way to play scissors paper stones with nerd, or at least, i have hypothesize a way, the next thing i would need is to get a pool of nerds to try it out.
posted @ 4:59 PM ||
