When I was in college, our statistics prof once bought the class lottery tickets to try to show us the calculation of odds. I really didn’t appreciate stats very much so at this point my stats vocabulary is pretty poor (a certain actuary I know is probably shaking his head right now) and I don’t know the exact terms for how this game could fit into a curriculum. I can say, however, that this virtual game of rock-paper-scissors is at least an interesting starting point for discussions about predicting behavior and artificial intelligence.
To play the game, select either “novice” or “veteran” for the computer (novice predicts your moves based on only your previous moves, “veteran” draws from its “experience” of 200,000+ rounds of previous play) and click away.
Have you played rock-paper-scissors lately? I think I did pretty well in my first attempt and it was fun. Could this fit in a sociology unit on behavior? Choices? Trust? Statistics class for prediction and odds? Either way, it can be fun just fun to play around with it too.
No Time to Sleep 