My Latest Review of "Games People Play: Game theory in Life, Business, and Beyond" by The Teaching Company

Could be presented in a much, much better way
Review Date: July 4, 2010
Overall Review: 2 stars (out of 5)

"Compared to other TTC course that I have finished, this one took me the longest by far. It was difficult for this course to hold my attention from one lecture to the next. Here are some positives (including good insights) and negatives of this course:

Positives:
+ There are some good insights / examples offered - I will summarize some of them at the end of this review.

Negatives (most or all refer to presentation rather than content):
- Prof's Stevens' presentation is often too slow in certain easy parts (e.g., explaining the hawk and dove game in the first 8-10 mins in Lecture 18 is way too long) and too fast for difficult 'please explain' parts (e.g., in the beginning of Lecture 9, he came up with the mixed strategies of 3x3 matrix (Stephen and Maude) too fast (in less than 30 seconds) - I asked myself: How did you come up with that?)
- Within each 30-min lecture, the presentation often lacks structure. Sometime it's difficult to follow where Prof Stevens is at in his arguments, and where he's going next
- At frequent points in the lectures, Prof Stevens relied too much on his jokes / styles to engage - often he just needs to 'get to the point' much faster!
- I recommend Prof Stevens to put the tables together with the video of his lecturing (side by side). This is done sometime - but not often enough. Often it's difficult to follow him otherwise
- I recommend Prof Stevens move from using 'you and I' to Parties 'A and B' (for example) - using 'you and I' is confusing (because 'you and I' parties change a lot as I think about it to myself (vs him saying it))
- Need answers to the questions provided at the back of the guidebook. I think (particularly for the more technical courses like this one) it defeats the purpose of having these questions if the answers are not provided
- Soccer penalty kicker & goalkeeper example in Lecture 8 - Prof Stevens saying that the statistics are replicated closely in real life is really 'circular' in thinking. The probabilities are obtained from the real-life data, so saying that the real life data agrees with the probabilities obtained is obviously circular.

Some of the useful insights and examples from this course include (not in any order):
1. Signalling (quality firm offering 'introductory offer')
2. Signalling (Coke doing a WOW ad - to signal they are strong financially; companies having lavish offices)
3. Threats (blanket threats can work if we individually identify / number threatees)
4. Incentive (Buffett example - if proposal fails, pay money to the minority group - i.e., make the proposal less likely to fail)
5. Sections on Oligopoly and Monopoly - interesting; e.g., it pays to pay a potential competitor to stay of a market
6. (Success of) Robert Campeau's two-tiered bid (vs Macy's) for Federated Stores (eg of prisoners' dilemma for shareholders)
7. Gov't ban on cigarette advertising - boon for cigarette companies (solving their prisoner's dilemma!)
8. How to make strategic moves credible (e.g., Peoplesoft use 'Doomsday Device' in response to hostile takeover; using 'agents' in negotiations)
9. Anonymous players (increasing social distance) reduce cooperation
10. Axelrod's winning Tit for tat strategy suggests: be Nice, Provokable, Forgiving & Straightforward
11. Bounded rationality in people (people only think 2 - 3 steps ahead; not more)
12. Evolutionary game theory (lecture 18) - the best phenotypes' Evolutionary Stable Strategies (ESS) or 'fitness' occur (even without the necessity of 'rationality')
13. Auctions: If people are risk averse, 'Dutch' beat 'English' auctions, and 1st price sealed bids beat Vickrey (2nd price) sealed bids.
14. Auctions in the internet: 'Dutch' beat 'English' auctions (people don't want to waste time (say in e-bay)), and vice versa in real (physical) auctions ('English' beat 'Dutch')
15. Auctions: Watch out for 'collusions' of buyers
16. Splitting the pie: Use Shapley value or Nash cooperative bargaining solution (basically you get the value you can get yourself (without the other party(ies)), and everything else gets shared equitably)
17. Coopetition - good examples (e.g., Nintendo in the 1980s (lots of bargaining power!))
18. Business - changing rules in contracts can be useful (e.g., most favoured customer, meet the competition, everyday low prices, and take-or-pay clauses)."