Friday, February 26, 2010

Golden Balls

Thanks to one of my students (Gary) for sending this on. This is the most unsettling example of a prisoner's dilemma type game being played out that I have ever seen.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Coding up the episodes of this game-show would make for an interesting data-set; even just to look at gender differences and differences in monetary amounts.

Seamus said...

Martin,

I have just done that! A rough first draft is available here. Pretty basic stuff so far but I looked at gender, jackpot size, age and occupation.

Seamus said...

The episode shown in the clip posted is also quite interesting as the four contestants were returning contestants. All four had previously reached the final round in previous episodes and had "steal" played against their "split".

They went away with nothing and their opponent got the full jackpot. This episode gave them a chance to repeat the game, albeit with different players.

Liam Delaney said...

Yes Seamus, in fairness to the woman involved, she had started off on the virtuous path and only went to the dark side after being burned herself. Thanks for sending on your paper.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for sending on your paper Seamus; that will make for interesting reading!