Game Theory
July 15th, 2008 by cbaxter.Today was a bit math heavy compared to the usual. I spent the morning in business decisions class – running simulations on exercises including poker hands and conditional probabilities. For the most part, I can follow along OK. The professor is considerably brilliant and, on a funnier note, is the go-to-guy for McDonald’s when they need to calculate the odds for their various games, like Monopoly.
Kellogg is also hosting the Games 2008 (Third World Congress of the Games Theory Society) conference this week, so I was able to sit in on a panel conference manned for four the most recent Nobel Prize winners. The room just pulsed with brainpower. One of the attendees was John Nash, the game theorist who inspired the movie A Beautiful Mind.
A lot of the conversation was beyond me (I’m not a game theory guru), but it was interesting to see how the mathematics was applied to everyday situations. For example, in GPS systems — if there is an accident, and the GPS routes you around it, then if enough people have that GPS the fastest way to go is through the accident. Need to fix that. They also discussed, more seriously, about applications to elections, license auctions and social demand problems.
Overall, was a pretty fun experience to be a fly on the quant wall.
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