i thought what you said was idiotically obvoious. so i made a joke about it, but i dont post here much so maybe it was not a waste of time to post it

lol @ u

I feel like if we are going to call this "game theory" we might as well call whatver reason you should kick a PAT with no time left left in a tie game an application of game theory.

when there are players deploying strategies to achieve objectives, and our goal as curious outsiders is to understand and describe just what the heck is going on, one of our best strategies requires the language and tools of game theory (broadly construed). note that game theory is not necessarily required to discover what strategies within a given game are best -- the formalism of game theory was not helpful in discovering its own usefulness, for instance -- but it is a nice descriptive aid.

almost everyone should do nothing but repeat what is obvious because as soon as they stop they forget.

can someone just switch my avatar to Buzz Killington?

sorry.... what i though you said "people are leaving out....." was something that i thought nobody was leaving out. so i made a snarky post about it. probably was not warrented....

There are players, strategies and payoffs so why not?

The prisoners' dilemma is pretty damn simple as well and would definitely be considered game theory.

I like to think the second one is a whole fuzzy gem of fail

the comments in that 2nd one are such a trainwreck.

i always think when people say "game theory" in these situations, they mean something they aren't going to explain, when it is actually trivial to explain


Woops, you sould like a philosophy kid, in which case i have no idea what i am talking about because i used a language to express it

prisoners dilemma is mildly interesting... if you construct a football example as mildly interesting i'll think about it the same but this decision is pretty boring .

kidcolin,

any dispassionate hyper-rational analyst whose one and only objective was to answer the question, ''what should bill belichek have done in this particular instance if his one and only objective was to win this specific football game?" would not be able to provide a definitive answer. they would instead offer up a probability distribution of answers given what we know about the usefulness and reliability of the available evidence and methods. unsurprisingly, that sort of talk is not seen because it is boring, unpersuasive, and signals an unwillingness to accept the ''spirit of the conversation'', i.e., a refusal to participate in the social game that has sprung up around this super exciting event (i think he should probably just punt the god damn ball, if you're wondering; expressed well, it makes the most friends).

what i find so interesting about this thread is how people choose to play this game (this relates directly to pb's talk of business; perhaps more later) around the game. "I Believe In EV!" "Conventional Wisdom Aint So Crazy" "Meta-Analysis of EV vs. CW/Im Smarter Than All", all of these are techniques people use to..

well, you can finish the thought. bedtime for buzz.

1`q

I doubt that creating an algorithm to make play calls would lead to better decisions; unless it was extraordinarily specific. You wouldn't have time to plug in the variables. If you got Randy Moss matched up against a poor cornerback and noticed the defense was in a specific alignment you wouldn't want to run whatever the algorithm determines and obviously change the play.

The reason this is not a game theory situation is because there is only one decision maker, kids, the Colts aren't "playing" this round. There are game theory aspects to other parts of football, obviously.

vn

Peter King comes close to realizing he's an idiot after he compared Belichick to Grady Little....

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/200...ail/index.html

I see a lot of people in the media doing this. They completely blasted BB at first. They see the math. Then they say...oh yea well, I saw the math...but I'm still right...because of intangibles...and the feel of the game...and Peyton Manning on the other side...yea.

I voted earier that yes that I agreed with going for it on 4th down. And have in various places seen that mathematically going for it is slightly better than punting.

So now I'm thinking, with all the distractions that have occurred, as a result of taking the unconventional (albeit mathematically correct) option, was it really worth it?

And it's hard for me to answer my own rhetorical question as Belichick is so good at keeping his team focused and ignoring the distractions. But I'll bet a fair amount of time and energy is/was being expended on the backlash from this.

i'm pretty sure belichick gives very close to 0% of a **** what anyone else thinks, and i doubt he lets any possible backlash prevent him from making the correct in-game decision. there's just no way.

the upside is winning the game, the downside is...media distractions? he'll take that tradeoff any day

I'd like to say that Thremp is such a good poster when he's posting like this.

As cool as it sounds coming from poker players, not every situation is a game theory problem. Game theory != All decision making.

From Thremp's linked 2nd blog.

Hypothesis: Thremp is one of the most socially awkward people on earth IRL.

I'm not sure slightly is correct. I think it's significantly better and I'm quite sure that on the inside, this is no longer a distraction. Belichick is so good at getting his team to focus, all they're thinking now is how to beat the Jets.