Facilitator notes: not student-facing. These notes are for planning and running classes. Student resources are at vknight.org/gt/.

Nash equilibrium

Activity (20 minutes)

Goal. Build towards the Nash equilibrium of a symmetric zero-sum game through repeated play.

Play a "divisional" class round robin tournament of Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock. Ask students to play in groups of four, then ask the winners to stand up and keep playing until a single class champion remains.

The champion plays me for a bribentive.

Discussion (20 minutes)

Discuss the Nash equilibrium chapter.

Discussion Point: After the definition of support enumeration algorithm, ask how many steps to obtain the Nash equilibrium for our game?

From the activity to the exam answer

The activity above is written up as a marked exam question: Question 1 (the in-class activity) on the Nash Equilibrium page, with a full worked solution. Closing the loop here is the step that helps students who find exams hard: work through that question together, or set it as the immediate follow-up, so they see the game they just played turned into a full-mark answer.

Communications

General email templates to send before and after this class. Fill in the bracketed placeholders before sending.

Before class

Hi all,

A reminder that our next Game Theory class covers Nash equilibrium.

All of the course materials, including the relevant chapter, are available
at https://vknight.org/gt/. It is worth skimming the chapter beforehand.

See you in class,
Vince

After class

Dear all,

Thanks for your work in today's class on Nash equilibrium.

A recording is available here [RECORDING LINK] and on Learning Central.

All class resources are available at https://vknight.org/gt/.

Thanks,
Vince