ך Game Theory's Players-Actions-Payoffs and the Five W's of Newspaper Writing. At my weekly game theory study group with Tillman Klumpp and Rick Harbaugh, we realized that good practice in game theory, economics in general, and newspaper writing is similar. We were complaining about a working paper in which the author, a novice, had carelessly scattered the bits of his firms' payoff functions scattered here and there through the paper. I mentioned that someone once told me that the most important thing in giving a paper where the ever-lively Gary Becker was in the audience was to be able to answer his standard question, "What's being maximized?" In my game theory book, I talk about setting out the Rules of the Game: Players, Actions, Payoffs, and Information. Classic advice to newspaper writing (as noted by this person and in USA Today) is that you should make sure your story tells "the five W's: who, what, when, where, why." All except "where" fit good modelling too:

Players= Who
Payoffs =Why
Order of Play (actions, information) = WHEN
Actions, outcomes = What.

[ http://php.indiana.edu/~erasmuse/w/04.02.07b.htm . Erasmusen@yahoo.com. ]

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