Rock, Paper Scissors

I lis­tened to an inter­est­ing pod­cast today, explor­ing the game Rock, Paper, Scis­sors, pre­dic­tion pat­terns and game theory.

Being clever isn’t an effec­tive way of win­ning, as peo­ple are rarely per­fect deci­sion mak­ers. The Nash equi­lib­ri­um is only rel­e­vant to domains with per­fect deci­sion mak­ers. So it is impor­tant to con­sid­er the choic­es of others.

In the pod­cast, it was men­tioned that from large datasets:

“The biggest chunk of peo­ple will think one step ahead, the next biggest chunk of peo­ple will think total­ly ran­dom­ly, the next biggest chunk of peo­ple will think two steps ahead, and a small num­ber of peo­ple will go beyond two steps.”

It also con­sid­ers crowds and groups influ­enc­ing decisions.

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Link to the pod­cast: Rock, Paper, Scis­sors (BBC)