Taking the temperature of the class and a rock paper scissors lizard spock tournament

In Friday’s class I took a brief poll about how things were going for students in the class and then we all played rock paper scissors lizard spock tournaments.

A recording of the class is available here.

Class temperature check

At the start of class I asked you to rate from 0 to 10 the following aspects of the class:

1. Pace (0 slow, 10 fast)
2. Fun (0 boring, 10 good)
3. Individual coursework (0 worried, 10 OK)
4. Group coursework (0 worried, 10 good)
5. Content/resources (0 bad, 10 good)
6. Class time (0 bad, 10 good)

39 people responded and the results can be seen here share.cleanshot.com/XZrFhT0x:

1. Pace got a score of 5.4 out of 10.
2. Fun got a score of 8.2 out of 10.
3. Individual coursework got a score of 4.7/10.
4. Group coursework got a score of 3.7/10.
5. Content/resources got a score of 7.1/10.
6. Class time got a score of 7.4.

Overall I think this looks about right. I understand the worry about the assessment. For the individual work we will spend time preparing for it (I promise). For the group coursework please do approach me to discuss ideas.

A rock paper scissors lizard tournament

After discussing how the class was going, I invited you to play a rock paper scissors lizard tournament.

The first time I heard of this game (a variation of rock paper scissors) was in an episode of the Big Bang Theory. You can find a clip of it here: YouTube and a summary of the rules are available here.

After everyone played their tournaments (a knock out with a final), we had a discussion about how to win. A number of suggestions came up including:

• Convincing your opponents you were a weak player prior to playing. (What makes a strong player is the question at hand!)
• Believing your opponents might play more or less of a particular strategy and choosing accordingly. Specifically I had mentioned prior to the start of play that over the years of doing this, I have noticed that not everyone seems capable of doing the “Spock” symbol. Rafa brought this up and said he had played based on this BUT it seems that this year everyone was able to do it.
• Being unpredictable. The practical implication of this: make the actions of your opponent irrelevant.

Before finishing up, I briefly showed how the game could be represented mathematically:

\[A = \begin{pmatrix} 0 & -1 & 1 & 1 & -1\\\\\\ 1 & 0 & -1 & -1 & 1\\\\\\ -1 & 1 & 0 & 1 & -1\\\\\\ -1 & 1 & -1 & 0 & 1\\\\\\ 1 & -1 & 1 & -1 & 0\\\\\\ \end{pmatrix}\]