In this episode, Matt was curious about Jadrian’s favorite topic to teach. The two have already covered Matt’s favorite topic in a previous episode, which means it’s Jadrian’s turn to share. Even though he knew this question would come eventually, he wasn’t ready to pick a single topic. It turns out that once he settled on game theory, it was easy for the two of them to talk about why it’s such an awesome principles topic to teach. Jadrian only teaches it in his principles course, but Matt gets to teach an entire course on game theory!
In this episode, we discuss:
Chat about professional development stuff around Jadrian’s newsletter & Matt’s YouTube channel
Why game theory is Jadrian’s favorite topic
Some of the fun games they play in class with students
Pop culture references
And much more!
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Some show notes:
Jadrian has finally ended his Virginia-based brewery streak because he hadn’t gone beer shopping before the episode. Instead, he’s kicking it off with Woodchuck’s Mimosa cider. Matt cracked open a Light Lager from America’s oldest brewery, Yuengling. Jadrian isn’t a fan, but he does like Iron City from Pittsburgh.
Jadrian struggled to come up with a topic but finally settled on game theory as his favorite topic. Part of why he loves the topic is because it’s the first chance to talk to students about interdependent decision making, and there are A LOT of pop culture clips that can be shown. One of Jadrian’s favorites is this scene from Golden Balls:
Jadrian really likes teaching game theory because it’s the first chance that students really start thinking critically about solutions. The previous lessons tend to involve students just learning a pattern, but game theory is the chance that they stop and think about all the possibilities. Like professional soccer players trying to figure out where to kick a penalty kick, or our dear readers trying to answer this question:
If you’re one of our early readers, you’ll have to come back and check to see if you’re right. The nice part about it is that you can rationalize almost any answer! Jadrian and Matt then went on to talk about all the other games they play during class to demonstrate different concepts. If you have a favorite game we didn’t mention, let us know:
Before getting into the game theory examples, Jadrian wanted to share one of his favorite class activities. He takes an old episode of ABC News and breaks it into chunks to demonstrate common perceptions. The show’s producers dumped 6 teams in New York back in the early 2000s and asked them to find each other before the day was over. They teamed up with Barry Nalebuff to discuss the game theory behind the experiment:
This week’s pop culture references:
There was a lot of pop culture in this episode, but Matt and Jadrian were careful to highlight their favorite clips. To avoid another Broadway reference, Matt went with the chicken game from Footloose:
Jadrian went with a very classic clip from A Beautiful Mind, which tells the story of Nobel Laureate John Nash. The famous scene is known as the bar scene, and it’s the point in the movie where John Nash (played by Russel Crowe) realizes that interdependence is an important component of decision making. You can watch the movie (for now) if you have Amazon Prime!
Part of why Jadrian likes the scene so much is that Nash talks about how it’s important for them to work together, but economists consider the Nash Equilibrium as the outcome when players don’t work together:
#14: Why is Game Theory Awesome?