Category Archives: Best Posts

It’s all in a name: "Kingdom of Norway" vs. "Democratic People’s Republic of Korea"

Sometimes it seems bad countries come with long names. North Korea is “People’s Democratic Republic of Korea”, Libya is “Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya”, and the like. But on the other hand, there’s plenty of counter-examples — it’s the … Continue reading

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Game outcome graphs — prisoner’s dilemma with FUN ARROWS!!!

I think game theory could benefit immensely from better presentation. Its default presentation is pretty mathematical. This is good because it treats social interactions in an abstract way, highlighting their essential properties, but is bad because it’s hard to understand, … Continue reading

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Simpson’s paradox is so totally solved

My friend Lukas just wrote a great formulation of Simpson’s Paradox as a puzzle: Against left-handed pitchers, Player A has a higher batting average than Player B. Player A does better against right-handed pitchers also. Is it possible that B … Continue reading

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4-move rock, paper, scissors!

Contrary to baseless speculation, it turns out it is possible to have a four-player, non-degenerate RPS game. The game below is assymetrical: B does better than others, but you don’t want to play it all the time because that makes … Continue reading

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