Survivor/Nash Equilibrium

Hi. Welcome to 2003 at ai. This promises to be a full and interesting year. I believe the theme will be Change. I hope to post a bit of a preview/prediction post sometime soon, but let's get right to the most important stuff here:

If you look at the little statistics generated by the Nedstat button in the right column, you'll see that ai is currently getting the majority of its hits from people looking for information about how John Nash's noncooperative game theory applies to Survivor. If you're looking for information on this, I suggest you read the following and you'll know just about all I know:

1. Is the Key to Survivor in 'Non-Cooperative Games'?—this is perhaps the most basic and simple explanation of the connection between the Nash Equilibrium applies to Survivor. I'd start here, then move on to:
2. Survivor, Game Theory, and John Nash—an article by a Professor of Political Science that explains a little more abstractly how the author thinks Nash's equilibrium would apply to Survivor. This article also contains three links to more practical applications of game theory to the most recent edition of Survivor.
3. John Nash's Survivor—this is a long discussion board post that originally appeared here and discusses all five editions of Survivor at length. This page is where I found the links above.

What does all of this mean to you if you're planning to apply to be on the show? Your guess is probably better than mine, but there's some discussion of that question here.

If you have more or better information, please share (click the comment link below).

Posted January 7, 2003 06:01 PM | life generally