The Utimate Threes Game: Rock, Paper, Scissors

This from Yahoo.

 “The question of how to win at rock-paper-scissors has, believe it or not, plagued mathematicians and game theorists for some time.

“While they previously had devised a theoretical answer to the question, an experiment by Zhijian Wang at Zhejiang University in China that used real players has revealed an interesting wrinkle to the original theory.

“In the experiment, Zhijian noticed that winning players tended to stick with their winning strategy, while losers tended to switch to the next strategy in the sequence of rock-paper-scissors, following what he calls ‘persistent cyclic flows.’

“Here's how it works in practice: Player A and Player B both start by using random strategies. If Player A uses rock and Player B uses paper, Player A loses. In the next round, Player A can assume that Player B will use paper again and should therefore use scissors to win. In the round after that, because Player B lost, Player A can assume that Player B will use the next strategy in the sequence — scissors — and Player A should then use rock, thus winning again.

“If you take the game on a theoretical level, the most mathematically sound way to play rock-paper-scissors is by choosing your strategy at random. Because there are three outcomes — a win, a loss, or a tie — and each strategy has one other strategy that it can beat and one other strategy that can beat it, and we don't care what strategy we win with, it makes the most sense to pick paper, rock, and scissors each one-third of the time. This is called the game's Nash Equilibrium.

“While the Nash Equilibrium should be the best strategy in real life, Zhijian found a decidedly different pattern when he and some other researchers recruited 72 students to play the game. They divided the pupils into 12 groups of six players and had them each play 300 rounds of rock-paper-scissors against each other. Zhijian also added a payout in proportion to the number of victories.”

Read more here.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/beat-anyone-rock-paper-scissors-002424689.html

Happiness Study Finds Three Sources

The semi-annual study on happiness, reported by Australia researchers who surveyed 60,000 individuals, indicates there is a golden triangle of happiness.  The study found three things are needed for a happy life.

“Financial security, a sense of purpose in life, and good personal relationships make up the ‘golden triangle’ of happiness,” they say.

Further, the report says, “Being part of an intimate relationship is the most vital component of wellbeing. Pets are no substitute for human beings….While money does not make us happy, a lack of it makes us miserable. Wellbeing rises up to about $100,000 a year, at which point its healing power drops off dramatically….People are happiest when they are active, and when they have a sense of purpose. Volunteers are amongst the happiest people, though conscripts are not.”

The report found fathers tended to be happier than men without children, but women's happiness stayed the same whether they had children or not.

The researchers said this could be because family was the greatest source of contentment and happiness for men throughout their lives, whereas women were able to maintain social connections beyond the family unit.

Threes and the Modern Story

The modern epic story has become one of incredible visual and audible force, a technology marvel. Look no further than the last Star Wars movie, “The Force Awakens,” to see the perfected evolution of the ages-old tale.

 

“The internal mechanics of myths may not have changed much over the years, but the technology used to impart them certainly has,” writes The Economist in December.

The Greeks told grand stories through the early epic poems of Homer and Hesiod from the 7th century BC, roughly. Homer’s (Greek) Iliad and Odyssey and Virgil’s (Roman) Aeneid are The Big Three classics. As in many epic stories of the same form that preceded Homer and Virgil and those that followed them, the hero makes a long journey, faces and defeats adversaries, and returns home transformed by his experience. That’s the basic three-part formula in the story line that’s been repeated for millennia, I described in my first book, Threes.

“In Homer’s day, legends were passed on in the form of dactylic hexameters: modern myth-makers refer computer graphics, special effects, 3D projections, surround sound and internet video distribution,” writes The Economist in its “Leaders” column describing The Disney Company’s rise to the top tier of modern epic storytellers.

The author says Disney starts with tropes, the first of three key elements in its modern storytelling. Tropes are Disney properties that draw on “well-worn devices of mythic structure to give their stories cultural resonance.”

Employing the capacity of its recent acquisitions of Pixar, Marvel and Lucasfilm, Disney unleashes its technology marvels with such force that Walt would surely turn a smile. Finally Disney’s toys, merchandise and theme parks complete the triad of the modern mythic story as business and cultural powerhouse.

Ultimately, states The Economist, “these modern myths are so compelling because they tap primordial human urges—for refuge, redemption and harmony….Similarly, modern myth-making, reliant though it is on new tools and techniques, is really just pushing the same old buttons in stone-age brains. That is something Walt Disney understood instinctively—and that the company he founded is now exploiting so proficiently.”

Three Benefits and Employment

Full-time employment in the U.S. continues to improve.  As available unemployed workers become scarcer, employers may be inclined to offer more as they select from a smaller pool.  The Big Three benefits of full-time employment that employers can provide their employees are pensions and retirement plans, healthcare insurance and unemployment insurance. 

All three areas are stressed.  Pensions, including Social Security, are being stretched by the wave of retiring, older workers who claim the benefit in retirement. Does the trend suggest employers and employees will pay a higher percentage of pay to the Social Security system in the future just to make ends meet? Health care costs, including insurance, continue to increase significantly year on year. Unemployment insurance payouts for laid off full-time employees, state to state, have been requested significantly during the last decade. 

What have been the responses by employers? First, they use part-time or contract employees to avoid paying some benefits.  Second, employers over time have significantly reduced the employer share of pension contributions and health care payments. Third, they have removed benefits. 

What then happens as we approach full employment?  My guess, not much changes even though, theoretically, labor has more leverage in an open market for talent.

Three Tips for Building Courage

From the new book by former Navy SEAL Eric Greitens, three tips for building courage and resilience are:

 

1. Let go of excuses.

 

2. Learn to control your breathing.

 

3. Write it down in order to analyze your fear objectively.

Prouder, Stronger, Better

President Ronald Reagan made us feel better, even though times then, like now, did not always feel better.  Here’s the text from a re-election campaign ad in 1984:

“

It's morning again in America. Today more men and women will go to work than ever before in our country's history. With interest rates at about half the record highs of 1980, nearly 2,000 families today will buy new homes, more than at any time in the past four years. This afternoon 6,500 young men and women will be married, and with inflation at less than half of what it was just four years ago, they can look forward with confidence to the future. It's morning again in America, and under the leadership of President Reagan, our country is prouder and stronger and better. Why would we ever want to return to where we were less than four short years ago?

”

Warren Buffett's Three Secrets

Warren Buffett is in the news this week with his now-famous letter to shareholders.  In an interview article published in December, Tony Robbins quotes Warren Buffet’s three secrets to wealth. They are worth repeating.

"When I asked Warren Buffett — what are the secrets to your wealth, he said it's three things. He said, No. 1, it's being born in America. No. 2 is good genes, so I live long enough, and No. 3, it's compound interest. Compound interest — people have no idea the power that it really has."