« Föredrag: Google under huven | Main | Trust: Making and Breaking Cooperative Relations, edited by Diego Gambetta »
oktober 26, 2004
Game Theory for Swingers: What states should the candidates visit before Election Day?
Jordan Ellenberg i Slate: Game Theory for Swingers: What states should the candidates visit before Election Day?
Some campaign decisions are easy, even near the finish of a deadlocked race. Bush won't be making campaign stops in Maryland, and Kerry won't be running ads in Montana. The hot venues are Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, which have in common rich caches of electoral votes and a coquettish reluctance to settle on one of their increasingly fervent suitors. Unsurprisingly, these states have been the three most frequent stops for both candidates.
Conventional wisdom says Kerry can't win without Pennsylvania, which suggests he should concentrate all his energy there. But doing that would leave Florida and Ohio undefended and make it easier for Bush to win both. Maybe Kerry should foray into Ohio too, which might lead Bush to try to pick off Pennsylvania, which might divert his campaign's energy from Florida just enough for Kerry to snatch it away. ... You see the difficulty: As in any tactical problem, the best thing for Kerry to do depends on what Bush does, and the best thing for Bush to do depends on what Kerry does. At times like this, the division of mathematics that comes to our aid is game theory.
Posted by hakank at oktober 26, 2004 06:39 FM Posted to Spelteori och ekonomi