So yesterday, after that post about my stuttering psych professor, I went to my econ class. I knew Albert was going to be there, but I didn’t know David Y would be there too. But the best surprise was this: my econ professor also stutters. And on top of that, he has a German accent. In fact, I would say he’s quite new to America, because he scheduled a midterm on the day of Thanksgiving.
It wasn’t so bad, though. Unlike my first professor, I think this one was just stuttering because he was nervous, and he stopped halfway through lecture. Also, since the class is about game theory, we got to play some interesting games the first day. In fact, he put his own money on the line for a game to make it more interesting for us.
Here’s the rules: everyone writes down a number between 0 and 100 on a piece of paper and turns it in. The person who is closest to two-thirds of the average of the numbers wins! The professor used that as a weeder, and then played heads-up against the class winner of that round for $5 of his own money. (The student put nothing on the line.)
What numbers would you pick in that scenario? (Keep in mind that you do not know the other players at all, and you probably can’t guess what they will pick with any sort of accuracy, unless you are a con man with an uncanny ability to cold read people.) Would you pick the same numbers for both rounds?
Open the spoiler section to see the strategy behind the game.
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