A Good Friday

Today were my worst two classes, and I was feeling a bit ornery, not a good combination. We were almost done with the book, and the day was all about speaking, so I decided to enact some revenge. I set the new topic to Paradoxes, and tried to explain through example what a paradox is. Some people understood, others looked at me with empty expressions. Then I presented them with the game theory; which apparently a lot of adults don’t understand. Most of the kids were actually able to understand te idea of which option was best and why it was never reached, or at least feigned it convincingly. I used the prisoner’s dilemma example:

Prisoner B doesn’t talk Prisoner B betrays A

Prisoner A doesn’t talk Six months of jail each A: 10 years
B: No jail
Prisoner A betrays B A: No Jail
B: 10 years Five years of jail each

The point is that when they are not allowed to talk with each other (because the police are questioning them in different rooms, just think of a crime drama where they catch more than one person) the vast majority of the time they won’t both keep quiet. While six months seems like the best offer, it isn’t attainable because it’s either six months or ten years. If A doesn’t talk, but B does, then A gets ten years, versus a possible five years if they both talk. The Nash Equilibrium (if I remember correctly) will have both the prisoners betray each other making it the inevitable outcome. Only one of my students understood that, which was really impressive because I didn’t do a stellar job explaining it.

Now, on to my revenge. You should be able to guess this next step based on what I spent the most time explaining to you, the reader. I set up my own version of the Prisoner’s Dilemma, but instead of going to jail it was about who was going to get homework. I also did it in a snide way, where there was only one penalty, so instead of the 6 months → 10 years difference, it was all the same amount of homework. It all came down to who would have HW and who wouldn't:

Group 2 Assigns HW Group 2 Receives HW

Group 1 Assigns HW Both have HW 1: No HW
2: HW
Group 1 Receives HW 1: HW
2: No HW Neither have HW, since none was assigned

Needless to say, I assigned both of the classes homework; no group figured out the best option here was just to Receive the homework since it was the same penalty. It was a glorious day of classes.