A History Major's Journey

[Westerner]

October-December 2013 semester, continued.

Games People Play
Professor Ramzi Salloum
Grade: A (98)

Part 1:
Well. I wasn't exactly sure what I was getting myself into when I signed up for "Games People Play." I needed to fill some elective spots with TESC classes and this one looked interesting. I'm not a real mathy person so I had to kinda struggle to get past the math in the first couple modules, but now it's looking more fun—real life situations, social stuff, and all that.

There are 8 modules to be done in 12 weeks. Most modules are 1 week but for a couple you get 2 weeks. I try to catch up/get ahead when I can.

The books you'll be using are "Game Theory: A Nontechnical Introduction" by Morton Davis and "The Game's Afoot!" by Alexander Mehlman. In each module, you'll have video lectures to watch. They're about 30 minutes long and you get a link to where they're posted on YouTube. Professor Stevens, who does those, is really fun and engaging.

My professor for this course is Ramzi Salloum. He's not involved in the Discussion Forums, but if you have a question, just email him and he'll promptly send back a helpful reply. The lectures seem to do the main teaching for this course. The books are a little less important so far.

So, that's the basics about this course. I'm about a month into it and I'll post again soon.

Part 2:
So, the basic info about this course is in my previous post. Of the 2 books, the "Nontechnical Introduction" is, as its name implies, nontechnical and easy to understand. "The Game's Afoot" is more technical and mathy, so I didn't enjoy it as much.

My professor, Ramzi Salloum, didn't get on the discussion forums but was really good about replying to questions I emailed him (except sometimes he was traveling and couldn't answer; that's where forums come in ) For the first time, I had questions about the course content (due to the math) and when I emailed, he sent back helpful tips; I also emailed him about my final paper because I was concerned about doing it right. If I didn't understand concepts and so got something wrong in my essays, he would grade down some but always explained why. If you were learning and showed it in your writing, he appreciated it. He was always encouraging and nice I highly recommend him!

I liked the premise of this course—I didn't know anything much about game theory and it was interesting to learn about it. Really, game theory surrounds us every day, and we use its principles all the time. There are a lot of social observations and implications which were fun to identify, study and analyze. What I didn't really enjoy was the math; sometimes the weekly essay questions dealt with more mathy concepts and solving problems. But thankfully Professor Stevens, who did the video lectures which you'll mostly be learning from, doesn't go into too much math and explains things 2 ways: mathy and non-mathy. Pretty much the only math that's presented is algebra (even though you can go into calculus, thankfully we don't in the course!). Professor Stevens puts up some calculations involving long strings of numbers and letters, like in algebra, and to understand the concept, you'll need to (sort of) understand the math. If I re-watched it a few times I usually got it In the written assignments, there are occasionally things like finding probabilities, using decimals, and equations (involving formulas you're given) that you have to work with. Oh, and sometimes the course seemed to be less-than-ideally laid out, because essays you wrote one week would have been less confusing if you'd known about concepts introduced the next week So, if you want to, read ahead some.

But overall, a really good course. You get lots of chances to study human behavior and concepts, and can additionally learn how to mathematically figure out the best options in a scenario. I must say I never knew before that there was a mathematical solution to the "problem" of which way to go when 2 people meet going opposite directions in the hallway

I got 100s on most of my written assignments (90s on some) 100s on the discussion postings, and a 100 on my final paper (10-12 pages, but I went over) for a final grade of 98, or A.