But today I am thrilled to say there is finally a great game theory introduction that I can recommend. The e-book is called:

Game Theory 101: The Basics & Extensive Form

The book covers the basics of game theory, including the Prisoner’s Dilemma, mixed strategy equilibrium, and it also covers extensive form games (game trees) in which players move in sequence, like the ultimatum game. There are tons of diagrams and lengthy discussions to help you understand the concepts.

One of the remarkable things is how cheap the book is. This ebook which has over 100 pages is selling for a mere $2.99 on Amazon (there is also a lite version for $0.99 called Game Theory 101: The Basics, but I would suggest the $2.99 version as it is more comprehensive and suited for readers of this site).

Very important: while the book says it’s available for Kindle, you don’t need a Kindle to read it. You can read the book on your PC, Mac, iPhone, Android phone, or virtually any device by downloading an appropriate Kindle reading app.

About the author William Spaniel

The book is written by William Spaniel, a name that may be familiar to some of you. William Spaniel has created an impressive series of Youtube videos with the same brand name of “Game Theory 101.” He has also been a long time reader of this blog, and he has contributed with many comments and a great idea for how to find cheap gas using game theory (a bit more on that in the interview below).

I really respect William for writing the book and creating the videos, and even more so, it’s impressive he is doing this while he’s a student pursuing a PhD in political science at the University of Rochester. I got a chance to interview William Spaniel and I picked his brain about why he wrote the book and created the videos. I also got his opinion about why game theory textbooks are often not very good.

I hope you enjoy the interview, and definitely be sure to check out the ebook Game Theory 101.

What got you interested in game theory?

WILLIAM SPANIEL: A paper called Ethnic War as a Commitment Problem. Most people think I am an economist, but I am actually a political scientist by trade. Unlike economics, political science does not have any core tenants that all undergrads at every department must know before they can graduate. I think this leads to a watered-down field with mostly murky theories. But the concept of a commitment problem was refreshingly clear. I figured if game theory could create such focus in the otherwise directionless world of political science, I should learn more about it.

What motivated you to make Youtube videos?

I had played around with YouTube a bit prior to the creation of Game Theory 101. I noticed there were no good comparable options out there. When I started creating lesson plans to teach my roommate the field, I figured I would throw a few short clips on YouTube. It took off past my wildest expectations. Two years later, I have almost 100 videos, a partnership with YouTube, a website (gametheory101.com), and a book series.

Why did you decide to write a book?

My friend Chris pestered me endlessly until I wrote the book. This is the same friend from the car ride where we used the secretary problem to find cheap gas.

I get a lot of emails and comments with strange requests from this blog. What’s an odd/funny request you’ve gotten?

Every December and May/June, I get a few desperate emails from students offering hundreds of dollars to complete their take-home finals for them. I am still unsure how to tell them “no.”

Most game theory textbooks I have read are not very good. Why is that?

There are two reasons. First, every other game theory textbook I have read is written as a reference manual, not a teaching book. Every serious game theorist needs one of these on their bookshelf, but they are completely inaccessible if you do not already understand most of what they discuss. I do not understand why everyone writes this way. Maybe publishers will not publish anything less rigorous. Perhaps professors simply write in the way they were taught. Regardless, that is just how the genre is.

Second, print textbooks have restraints that digital textbooks do not have to worry about. When you take any sort of math class, the first thing that a professor stresses is that math is best learned through repetition. Yet textbooks often show a single example to introduce a new concept! How are you supposed to learn through repetition when you see one example and have 30 practice problems to contend with? But more examples require more paper and ink to publish, which publishers will not allow.

The digital market has no comparable restrictions—megabyte transfers are dirt cheap in comparison to traditional printing and shipping. Thus, I can cram multiple examples of every concept, show picture-by-picture how to best look at a game, and calculate all solutions line-by-line. A traditional publisher would have a heart attack if he saw such a manuscript, yet I can get away with selling a book less than a dollar.

You have a basic book for $0.99 and another one for $2.99. What’s the difference?

The Game Theory 101 textbook is an ongoing project. My $0.99 book is what you might think of as the first chapter. It covers how to solve basic matrix or strategic form games, like the prisoner’s dilemma, matching pennies, and chicken. The $2.99 book is the first two chapters. It includes everything in the first book, plus extensive form games. I recommend anyone who is taking an actual game theory class or who wants a deeper understanding of the field to buy the larger book. If you only have a casual interest in game theory or just have a micro economics test with a splash of game theory, the first one is the best bet.

Why split the book at all? One of the neat things about digital publishing is that you can sell exactly what the consumer needs. The average microeconomics or game theory class covers just a fraction of the material in a normal game theory textbook. Why should you spend money for the part of the book that you will never use?

I am in the process if writing two more chapters. When I finish them, I will package them in a similar way. I understand that it might be a little daunting for the consumer to see so many options, but I think the money they will save makes it worthwhile.

Thanks for the interview. Be sure to check out Game Theory 101: The Basics & Extensive Form, it’s a great read, and stay tuned as William Spaniel releases more chapters.

I say this jokingly, but it is pretty much true. There is Amazon for consumer products, Yelp for restaurants and site-seeing, TripAdvisor for hotels, and Angie’s List for repair services. Even at the end of the day when I want a beer, there’s BeerAdvocate.

Review websites are a tremendous service and they have helped me make a lot more informed decisions.

Fake reviews spoil the game

The downside is review websites are victims of their own success. There is a huge market for fake positive reviews, ranging from owners that self-promote their business, patrons that are bribed with discounts for good reviews, and professional liars that sell positive reviews for $1 a piece.

Fake reviewers make me extremely mad, and they deserve punishment for the tremendous injustice they are doing to society. But there’s no point in getting angry as retribution is an unrealistic goal.

The best thing to do is to ignore these fake reviews. If fake reviews can be identified, then there will be less of a market for them.

Today I came across a useful and free tool in the battle. This is a computer algorithm that can spot spammers much more accurately than we can. In the study, the algorithm was nearly 90 percent accurate versus humans just about 60 percent. More about this after the jump.

Also a small administrative note: this website is undergoing account maintenance and may be offline from October 29th, from 12:00am to 4:00am EDT.

H/T: New York Times via The Responsibility Project

The Review Sniper

The algorithm is called the Review Sniper and there is a demo version available for free at the website ReviewSniper.org

The way it works is simple: you paste in a review, and click “submit.” The Review Sniper then tells you whether the review falls into the 4 categories of “truthful, mostly truthful, somewhat deceptive, or deceptive.”

The directions are all self-explanatory at the website:

Currently the tool is completely free and it works best for hotel reviews because those are the reviews it was tested with.

The theory of fake reviews

The Review Sniper is the result of work from researchers at Cornell. In a recent paper, the researchers worked out an algorithm that could identify deceptive opinion spam, which are “fictitious opinions that have been deliberately written to sound authentic, in order to deceive the reader.”

The algorithm relies on a set of linguistic clues and word analyses to parse out genuine reviews from deceptive ones. The analysis is way over my head, so I will not conjecture any more. But you can read about the details in the following paper.

To test the accuracy of the algorithm, the researchers compiled a set of reviews. They employed freelance writers to produce 400 deceptive reviews about Chicago hotels. These got combined with 400 reviews mined from TripAdvisor that seemed to be genuine (they were from repeat users, not overly positive, and long).

Three volunteers were asked to judge the reviews as fake or genuine, and the results were compared side by side with the algorithm. On the whole, the volunteers were only about 60 percent accurate in their conclusions. By contract, the algorithm was nearly 90 percent accurate in its identification.

That people are credulous is no surprise, and that is it helps to have emotionless algorithms to parse out fake reviews.

A closing test

The research so far seems limited to hotel reviews, but one hopes further research will make deceptive reviews a thing of the past.

If you want to test your own skill, see if you can identify whether the following reviews are truthful or deceptive.

Here are the reviews, used as examples in the paper.

The first review:

I have stayed at many hotels traveling for both business and pleasure and I can honestly stay that The James is tops. The service at the hotel is first class. The rooms are modern and very comfortable. The location is perfect within walking distance to all of the great sights and restaurants. Highly recommend to both business travellers and couples.

And the second review:

My husband and I stayed at the James Chicago Hotel for our anniversary. This place is fantastic! We knew as soon as we arrived we made the right choice! The rooms are BEAUTIFUL and the staff very attentive and wonderful!! The area of the hotel is great, since I love to shop I couldn’t ask for more!! We will definatly be back to Chicago and we will for sure be back to the James Chicago.

Do you have your answers? I can report that my guesses were right.

The answer is “Gur svefg bar vf zbfgyl gehgushy naq gur frpbaq vf qrprcgvir” (paste into rot13 to decode)

So the next time you come across a product with a suspicious review, you might want to check it out with the current demo version of Review Sniper.

An introductory story

Before I get to the book review, I want to tell a short story.

My friend’s office had a problem. There were many times that clients would call, and no one would pick up the phone. The boss yelled at everyone for being irresponsible. But were the employees really lazy, or was there something else going on?

I suggested the employees were not to blame when I wrote about this problem four years ago. The phone answering system, it turned out, was really poorly designed. Calls first went to the office secretary, but if she was out, then the call would roll over to ALL phones in the office. The situation created a game of chicken where each employee held off, hoping someone else would answer the call. And so many times no one answered the phones.

It was not the case that employees were lazy. They were simply trying to avoid extra work and hope someone else would cover. The problem could be solved easily by assigning shifts to answer phone calls on backup, restoring individual responsibility.

The lesson of that story was that context matters a lot. If you create a situation that encourages free riders, you are bound to end up with poor results. And by analogy, if you alter rules to encourage cooperation, you can end up with amazing results.

Situations Matter: a book about how context affects our world

Understanding the power of context is crucial to making good decisions. And on that note, I highly suggest the book Situations Matter by Sam Sommers, a psychology professor at Tufts University.

I was fortunate to receive an advance copy for review thanks to TLC Book Tours.

The book will be released on December 29, so keep an eye out for it, or get updates through Sam Sommer’s:

–Twitter
–Facebook page
–Website.

As a whole, Situations Matter was a fun and light read, with a discussion of many famous and interesting psychological experiments mixed in with a handful of anecdotes from the author’s life and pop culture references like Seinfeld.

I read the book in a couple of weeks, and it has definitely kept me thinking about ways I can improve my decisions by thinking about context. Here are 3 of the things I enjoyed about the book prefaced by one caveat.

A small caveat

A lot of the book talks about how people can be influenced and/or manipulated by context. There is an entire chapter about conformity that discusses the famous Milgram obedience and the Asch conformity experiments.

I agree that conformity is a powerful force, and there is a strong tendency for people to go with the flow.

But personally I have a long history of being eccentric and not caring what people think. And of course, this site is all about minding your own decisions and not others.

So the small warning is that you may find some of the advice is things you already practice: like it’s fine to disagree with groups of friends, and it’s okay to stand out in a crowd.

3 reasons I enjoyed this book

1. The book is conversational

I used to think non-fiction books were all about their subject matter. Now I find that I care a lot more about how a book is written and whether I will enjoy reading it.

Sommers does a great job of keeping the book fun. This is not always an easy task when you are dealing with experiments and trying to explain psychological concepts.

But Sommers manages to keep the book fun through personal stories and by writing in a conversational tone, frequently addressing “you” the reader. For instance, the book opens with a story about Sommers missing a flight, and he vents out his frustrations to bring you into his shoes. He then uses the situation as an opportunity to apply his knowledge to successfully negotiate a hotel and meal voucher.

I felt the casual tone helped out, and while that does mean the text is chatty and not always succinct, it was a writing style that I enjoyed overall.

2. The chapter on love is great

I’ve been to a lot of weddings recently, and it is the same story over and over again. People always talk about the same romanticized version of true love and how the young couple before you exemplifies this concept.

What is never talked about, because it is a mundane detail, is that love and relationships are dependent on more than good looks and compatible personalities. Relationships depend a lot on circumstances, like where people lived, the friends they knew, and where they met (research shows that people exercising, for instance, are more primed for arousal).

The chapter goes into research about how context can influence people’s feelings of attraction. I don’t want to spoil any of the interesting experiments that are mentioned, but if you must know, Sommers does talk about this experiment (his explanation is better)

Even if you do not typically read books about psychology, I would definitely recommend reading the chapter on love.

3. The book got me thinking about context

The biggest compliment I can give is to say the book has gotten me to think about context more.

When we go about our routine, we can overlook other people’s routines and the situations they face. In a concluding example in the book, Sommers talks about how he was trying to find a spot in a busy parking lot. One driver appeared to be getting out, but then sat there stopped.

Initially Sommers was angry because waiting was making him late (I mean who sits there in a spot?). But then he realized he should consider the other person’s situation and stay calm. It turned out later the driver was having auto problems, and was not stopped out of spite or indifference.

I am using the lessons in the book to think a bit more closely in my actions. The other day I was sending an email related to career networking. I did all the usual edits, but then I thought about the other side.

Would the person be more likely to respond if they got the email in the morning or evening? Was there a way they could answer me quickly, or did I overwhelm them with a long email? These questions made me shorten the email, and I sent it out during lunchtime rather than in the morning when I expected her to be backed up with email.

The book did a good job to get me thinking about context, and I am sure it will get you thinking about a few things too.

Find this book when it comes out

As I mentioned before, Situations Matter will be released on December 29. Definitely keep an eye on it, or pre-order it now (links to stores on this page).

Here are some places you can connect with Sam Sommers and get updates on the book.

–Twitter for Sam Sommers

–Facebook page for Sommers

–Situations Matter: book website.

In brief, this book is about how Joshua Foer, a journalist with average memory, went on to win the U.S. Memory Championship.

Before I get into details, let me say Moonwalking with Einstein is a superbly written book and I highly recommend it. I hand it to Joshua Foer for turning a boring subject like memory into a splendidly entertaining adventure.

I normally take weeks to finish a book. I read this in about a week, often staying up past my bed time as the book is hard to put down.

I want to thank TLC Book Tours for reaching out and providing a review copy of the book. I am glad to have read this book, as I would normally have never picked up a book about memory.

My initial skepticism

For most of my schooling, I was fascinated with memorizing facts. It was a big advantage to know dates for History, multiplication tables for Math, and vocabulary for English. I loved watching Jeopardy, and in high school I was captain of the quiz bowl team.

That perception changed in college. I soon began to realize that memorized facts were less important. A lot of what I had learned was useless, and so were my memory techniques. In my college classes, many professors offered open book exams, saying they were not testing us on facts, but rather how well we could reason. The brain is not made for memory. The brain is made for thinking.

So naturally I was skeptical about this book on memory. Messages about how we forget things and how computers have ruined our memory seem quaint to me, a romanticizing about an ancient time and an old style of learning.

But while some parts of the book contain this message, that is not by and large what the book is about.

It is a fun book, and let me explain some of the things I loved about it.

5 reasons I enjoyed this book

1. Great storytelling

While the main subject of the book is memory, the real subject is Joshua Foer, a young journalist who was living in his parents house when the book begins.

The narrative covers about a one year period in which Foer became interested in memory competitions, trained with daily exercises, and finally competed in the U.S. Memory Championship.

During that time, Foer seems to be traveling constantly, one day consulting with his memory coach in Europe, and another day meeting with Kim Peek, the person who inspired Dustin Hoffman’s character in Rain Man

When Foer gets stuck at one point in his training, he asks for help from K. Anders Ericsson, a psychology professor in Florida whose research is about how people get expertise (he contributed to the idea about needing at least 10,000 hours of practice to attain world-class status).

There are so many fascinating stories in the book, all captured with colorful descriptions.

2. Lots of research

There are over 200 footnotes in the book, with references to academic papers and the important tomes of memory tricks.

Foer does a great job of balancing the topics covered with the depth it covers them.

The book does not linger about a specific memory technique and drills. The techniques are explained, and then they are put in context of how to use them.

The section explaining memory palaces, an important technique, is a good example. It is first explained why the technique works. Then, it is put to practice. A list of 15 strange and unusual items is given as a shopping list, and then the technique is tested to show how you can memorize the items. I worked through the exercise, and I was amazed at how great it worked.

The book is not a handbook about increasing your memory. The memory topics are mostly covered as part of how Foer transforms his average memory into one that can memorize a deck of cards in under two minutes.

3. It’s funny

There are two main components to the book’s humor.

First are the people. Memory athletes are a generally eccentric and obsessive group of people. Foer describes his own transformation into that arena as he tries to work on his memory techniques. At one point he is using industrial ear muffs and huge black safety goggles with just a pinpoint of sight so he can block out distractions. It is amazing to read how far people will go to push their limits for competition.

The second part is the imagery for memory tricks. It is a principle that lewd and strange images are easier to remember. In one part, Foer describes how he is memorizing a deck of cards, and one of the images he comes up with is “a midget jockey in a sombrero parachuted from an airplane with an umbrella.”

This is just a sampling, and I do not want to spoil the fun by sharing some of the more amusing antics. But I’ll just say it gets pretty funny when these memory athletes go out to the bars.

4. Honesty

While the book is about memory and why it is important to increase memory, I felt there was a good balance of honesty. It is admitted when memory tricks are not practical for daily use.

Foer also does a great job of calling out people who make outrageous claims and are often trying to sell memory techniques for profit. He has the guts to question them in person, and to express his opinions in the book, like any good journalist should.

This is partly why I think it is tolerable that he praises ancient memory techniques and the “old” way of learning facts in school. I think he is honest to put that in perspective with living in the modern age.

5. The writing style

The book was a pleasure to read. It was most similar to reading a book by Malcolm Gladwell in how it mixed research with interviews and fun stories.

The book has a very casual tone that invites you to keep reading.

Go and get this book

It is a wonderful read, and between Joshua Foer’s stories and discussions about memory research, you will definitely find something interesting!

So check it out:

Moonwalking with Einstein

Joshua Foer’s Tour Stops

You can also check out other reviews of this book, from these fine websites that are part of the TLC Book Tour for Moonwalking with Einstein.

Wednesday, February 23rd: Nonsuch Book

Thursday, February 24th: Debbie’s World of Books

Friday, February 25th: Book Club Classics!

Wednesday, March 2nd: Ken Jennings

Friday, March 4th: Eclectic/Eccentric

Monday, March 7th: Man of La Book

Wednesday, March 9th: Sophisticated Dorkiness

Tuesday, March 15th: Mnemotechnics.org

Thursday, March 17th: this review at Mind Your Decisions

Monday, March 28th: Amy Reads

Wednesday, March 30th: In the Next Room

Thursday, March 31st: Luxury Reading

When I first got this question, I was hard pressed to find an answer. Game theory is a mathematical science, and many presentations can be intimidating. For example, many journals and textbooks are so complicated that it takes a mastery of Bayesian probability, set theory, and real analysis just to understand the problems! This is a tragedy, for a subject as interesting as game theory should be made accessible.

So over the last few years I have kept a special eye out for books aimed at general audiences. And I am glad to say there are a few good books on game theory.

I have listed the books I have especially enjoyed in a separate blog page about recommended books. And to do them justice, I plan to write full reviews on each of my favorites so you get a better idea of them.

Today I will discuss Rock, Paper, Scissors: Game Theory in Everyday Life by Len Fisher.

What the book is about

There are two quotes in the “praise” section that nicely summarize the book:

“Why be nice? In answering this simple question, Len Fisher takes us on a wry, fascinating tour of one of the most momentous sciences of our time. You couldn’t ask for a better guide to all the games we play.”
–William Poundstone, author of Gaming the Vote and Fortune’s Formula

“Rock, Paper, Scissors is a refreshingly informal as well as insightful account of key ideas in game theory. Len Fisher gives many examples, several from his own life, of games that post harrowing choices for their players. He shows how game theory not only illuminates the consequences of these choices but also may help the players extricate themselves from situations likely to cause anger or grief.”
–Steven J. Brams, New York University, author of Mathematics and Democracy

My one sentence summary is: Rock, Paper, Scissors is a popular science book that connects game theory to everyday situations and suggests several strategies for achieving cooperation.

(As you can tell, this book is a different style from other books I like such a Thinking Strategically or The Art of Strategy. This book is a lighter read and connects more to anecdotes and science.)

Book highlights

I will warn you that the book starts off a little bit slowly. The first chapter “trapped in a matrix” mainly describes the Prisoner’s dilemma and gives the negative connotation that the Nash equilibrium is a logical trap. The matrix graphics are not that illuminating either. Luckily, these setbacks didn’t stop me from reading the rest of the book which is full of interesting examples and explanations.

The second chapter “I cut and you choose” is where the book picks up. This chapter offers a nice introduction to the concepts of minimax and fair division. Fisher illuminates fair division with anecdotes like how he got in trouble as a kid shooting fireworks, and as a consequence had to yield fireworks with his brother. The answer he intuitively arrived to as a kid was what he know realizes was an application of the minimax principle. I was also impressed that Fisher discusses the principle of equal division of the contested sum, which I have discussed twice before (regarding religion and homeowner fees).

Chapter three is about seven of the most interesting game theory problems, which Fisher aptly dubs “the seven deadly dilemmas.” Here Fisher offers a great summary of such problems as the free rider issue and the game of chicken.

Chapter four is a humorous one, and is about the game “rock, paper, scissors.” It was new to me that rock, paper, scissors is in fact played in most of the world (though under various other names). I was also amused at how rock, paper, scissors can be used in conflict resolution. The reason is that the game has no pure strategy that dominates the others. Hence situations and games which seem to be at a standstill (say too many free-riders in overfishing) can be solved by adding strategies and converting them to rock-paper-scissors situations.

Chapters five through eight are all about cooperation: how we can achieve trust, bargain effectively, and change the game to avoid the “trap” of the Prisoner’s dilemma and other undesirable outcomes. I won’t go into detail, as the main fun points are similar in nature to the other chapters: the narratives and interesting examples from science.

Read the end notes!

One of the best parts of this book is the “Notes” section at the end. This is a substantial part of the book and it is full of narratives, jokes, and random trivia. The end notes are over 50 pages long-and this is for a book that is about 250 pages in total! I am still following up on many of the references and this alone has been worth the read.

Final thoughts

I hope this review gives you a better idea of the book. It is a great introductory read and a good addition for real-life examples of game theory. Check it out:

*I also owe a special thanks to the book publisher for providing a review copy