NABET, NABET 2015 Faculty Conference

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Teaching game theory with Haiku
Will Delavan, Ed Sullivan

Last modified: 2015-08-22

Abstract


Most undergraduate students first encounter game theory and, in particular, the Prisoners’ Dilemma in a microeconomics principles course.  Typically, game theory analysis is taught so that students can grasp the somewhat difficult notion that pricing and output decisions made by firms in an oligopoly market structure are determined interdependently.  In our paper, we present a novel way of introducing students to some fundamental notions of game theory, including strategic behavior, dominant strategies, repeated games (tit-for-tat strategies), and Nash equilibrium (non-cooperative equilibrium) using haiku poetry.  Haiku is an ancient Japanese poetic form of seventeen syllables.  In homework assignments (some are included in our paper and presentation), students are asked to construct a haiku poem employing at least one of the aforementioned game theory concepts.  To test the efficacy of this teaching method, two groups of students were employed.  The first group, the control group, was not given this assignment; the second group wrote game theory centered haiku poems. Next, students from both groups were asked identical questions on an exam.  Our results indicate that the use of haiku as a teaching technique substantially improved students’ understanding of the fundamental concepts of game theory and the Prisoners’ Dilemma in particular.


Keywords


Game Theory, Teaching, Strategy