After Dubner’s questioning of libraries, Folksonomy.com interviews Greg Boesel, co-founder and CEO of Swaptree, a Netflix-esque online trading site for books, DVDs, CDs, and video games — that’s also free of charge.
Via Bloomberg.com: While the athletes have been busy training for the Pan Am Games in Rio De Janeiro (July 13-29), the city’s prostitutes have also been preparing for the estimated 700,000 visitors by waxing, coloring their hair, and getting in shape. Though considering the dissapointing results for German hookers during the World Cup, there’s no guarantee that business will, er, rise to the occasion.
Knowing that we are fans of the sport (yes, sport, thank you very much), reader Bennett Gordon sent us this breakdown of techniques and strategies for winning Rock Paper Scissors.
6 Comments
It’s because the German hookers don’t use Brazilian waxing.
— discordianThinking that Rock Paper Scissors is a sport is like thinking that Boy George is sex.
— egretmanI am wondering if economists are drawn to RPS, if the knowledge of a zero-sum game of chance can be demystified to hold some deep poetry of the universe. I recently graduated from UNLV and my graduate thesis was in RPS, I kid you not, as was my under-graduate studies at Cal Poly.
I used Camerer’s Experience Weighted Attraction model (EWA) to study learning behavior in test subjects to see if they learned using an economic model (Bayesian Updating) or if they were responding to a Psychological learning model (Stimulus-Response). This was the most complicated way I could think of to see if people learned as economics believe (via updating the range of possible moves in accordance with optimal play) or like rats in a lab randomly pressing levers. It was a great distraction, but one could hardly call this education and whether all this hard work will translate into a lucrative RPS career remains to be seen.
It took me an extra year to graduate, since I needed a ton of approval from the human subjects department, and my initial experiment proved inconclusive, so I had to re-run it a couple of times under various conditions.
My conclusion was that people don’t respond very well unless they are properly motivated, and if you are a grad student trying to motivate under-graduates it helps to pay people up-front to get them to take you seriously.
I personally find RPS more interesting than Prisoner’s Dilemma and it is about time serious economists took note, so I applaud your effort, sir.
— tgalvinYesterday, my 7 year old son, who attends school in Panjim, the capital city of India’s smallest state, introduced me to a new version of “stone, paper, scissors.”
It’s called “tiger, woman, gun.” I found this indigenization quite amusing.
FYI, “woman” beats “gun”, and its symbol is the open hand, the tiger is signified by a claw-like gesture, and the gun is as you’d imagine.
— Vivek M.From an economics standpoint would the legalization of prostitution be good or bad for the economy?
— thepetflyWe need the proper easy link to get DVDs. Is it possible?
— SAKIL