Specifically, the paper examines the dynamics of the decisions people make given outcomes of previous trials. The purpose of the paper is to describe how people play it. I first want to note something: the purpose of the paper is not to show how to win the game. The Study’s Purpose and Prescriptive verses Normative Theory Okay, now that you’ve watched the video, let’s talk about Rock, Paper, Scissors.įair warning: this may get a little brain-twisty. Some readers may think my criticisms minor, but I hope you will all agree that it is a good lesson in critical thinking to parse them out.īefore reading further, watch the video, below. Nearly every report of this paper got the most crucial detail wrong.ĭespite the mess, the Numberphile video gets the most important points correct. However, a critique of it and other sources provides an opportunity to talk about some interesting psychological phenomena. Reports range in quality from getting the research completely wrong to a rather good explanation with a ridiculously wrong title. The paper was published online nearly a year ago and has been covered on dozens of academic review, popular news, and other websites, at least one of which is likely the source of what Fry presents. It’s got some cute animation and the material is presented by a charming mathematician named Hannah Fry who is clearly no dummy.īut several statements she made bothered me and I found the whole thing a confusing jumble when it came to presenting the findings of the paper, so I read the paper myself, did some additional research, and found what I think are some nontrivial problems with the way the paper has been interpreted. The video was only posted on January 27th, but it has already been viewed well over a half million times and is popping up in blog posts at popular sites. (Image by Ani Aharonian with Daniel Loxton.)Ī popular YouTube channel called Numberphile has published a video in which they claim to have a good strategy for winning at Rock, Paper, Scissors, gleaned from a paper on the topic.
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