Thursday, February 14, 2013

Game theory at work: How to get an A without taking the exam

How can you not take an exam and still make an A in it? See this interesting story from a programming class at Johns Hopkins for a great application of the fundamental cooperation and coordination problems we have been discussing in this class (with regard to trade liberalization and soon to the coordination of monetary policy). Especially interesting: the solutions the usual cooperation problems.

Quizzes and exams in our class are not curved...

3 comments:

  1. I think that this is a very helpful article in explaining what Game Theory is. I remember when I was a freshman I had some trouble understanding exactly how it worked. It is interesting to see Game Theory applied elsewhere than in international bargaining!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Man the coordination that must have gone into this.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. A Google spreadsheet and, more importantly, almost all students waiting right outside the classroom to (a) enforce that nobody would defect and (b) have the opportunity to take the exam, should someone defect. So this was not necessarily a pathbreaking solution to coordination problems, but still interesting.

      Delete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.