Winning The Bedtime Game

John Nash, who recently passed away, won the Nobel Prize in economics for his work on game theory. Here’s why.

Imagine you’re a parent, trying to make your three-year-old go to bed. There’s lots of ways you might try to do this, but let’s boil it down to two options: gentle, or firm. Your tiny tot also has two choices: obedient or, shall we say, obstreperous.

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R.I.P. John Nash

John Nash has died, aged 86.

John Nash is most famous for his work on game theory. Game theory tries to understand, mathematically, how people behave in situations where they have to compete or cooperate with another person, like “Rock Scissors Paper”, getting kids to go to bed, house auctions or nuclear disarmament negotiations.

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