Thread by @NGKabra

1/ I'm teaching my Game Theory course (for kids age 11-16), as a weekend course starting this Saturday.

In the run-up to it, I thought I'll write-up the experiences of teaching it to 2 batches of kids this summer: genwise.in/single-post/20…

Thread with highlights.

2/n Playing games is usually viewed as a waste of time. By parents, and also by students—the only difference being that the students actually like "wasting" time.

Not surprising then that a lot of student feedback indicated they would have liked to play more games. But...

3/ It turns out that much learning can happen while they are playing. "I did not expect it to be this informative." Or "I have learnt and evolved from what i was a week ago," or "I learnt so much in the past few days and i could finally spend some part of quarantine productively"

4/ Not just that, but there is homework, and the students appear to love it and ask for more.

5/ Why study game theory. Because analyzing simple games gives us strategies that work in a lot of messy, complex real-life situations.

Consider this clip from the movie Footloose, of the game of chicken:

6/ The Game of Chicken, while very simple, has been extensively studied by economists, and helps determine strategies in fields as diverse and important as terrorist negotiations, workers' strikes, and nuclear weapons deterrents.

Here's @amitvarma pointing out how another game from game theory is playing out in the @INCIndia right now:

8/ And consider this life-philosophy by Sam Altman (CEO of OpenAI, and ex president of Y-Combinator). This is one of the things the students learn in the course. And they understand it intimately because they use it in the games played during the course.

9/ See genwise.in/events-3/intro… for details of the course and to register. This is probably my last course for kids this year (as they will get busy with normal school after this)

Sorry, quoted the wrong @amitvarma tweet here. Should have been: