Cole Testaiuti ’16: Many students are at odds about the upcoming “J-Term” set for the 2013-2014 school year. Some argue it may distract them from their regular classes but others say they like the fact they will not have to take midterms. J-term does offer a variety of courses for students to choose from, allowing them to pick the course that best appeals to them. As Andrew Stone ’14 said, “Looking at the J-term course options, obviously some are more popular among students than others.” Courses that have stirred up the most interest range from those involving extensive travel to those that can be completed entirely within a classroom. Some courses also, as student Jay Kelly ’14 noted, “look fantastic on paper and therefore deserve a further explanation.” One course that certainly fits this last category is, “Games 4 Geeks.”
“Games 4 Geeks,” according to student Cole Grims ’14, “seems like an extremely interesting course,” that focuses on analyzing and discussing game theory and statistics. “Games 4 Geeks” will be taught by Adam Lavallee, a member of the math department, and by Charles Bryant, head of the history department. The course will focus on, among other things, “game theory” and statistics in sports. Partially inspired by stories like “Moneyball,” the story of how, by using interesting statistics in baseball, one can evaluate potential talent in new ways. “Games 4 Geeks” has been attracting a lot of attention from the student body.
Lavallee explained, “Game theory is about making decisions based on what someone else might do.” In the course, game theory is studied and used in many different situations. Using a real life example, Lavallee explained, “Imagine you’re a company and there are two periods, today and tomorrow. You are competing against another company to sell your product. For instance, if you’re both selling cereal you could both sell your cereal today and sell the exact same cereal tomorrow, or you could invest all your money one day and sell your better product the second day. The ideal move might be somewhere in the middle, but it also depends on what the other company is doing.” Through this example, Lavallee demonstrated how you could use game theory in a multitude of scenarios to predict how one’s business competitor is going to act next.
Lavallee continued by referencing Nate Silver, the man who invented a fresh way of predicting outcomes of baseball games through the use of statistics. Silver decided to take a look at what is being “undervalued” in games and used that to predict baseball outcomes. Silver then went on to bring the same ideas to poker. Lavallee noted that, “[Silver] looked at probabilities to judge what other people might have or do and that is where the math comes in.” Continuing his own impressive prediction history, in 2008 Nate Silver predicted correctly how 48 states would vote in the presidential election, and in this past election he predicted all 50 states. Lavallee and Bryant will teach the same principles in “Games 4 Geeks” that enabled Nate Silver to claim fame, success, and a respect in his field of statistics.
Interestingly, some of the underlying motive or “genesis” for the course revolves around poker. Lavallee and Bryant originally wanted to build the course specifically and exclusively around poker. Lavallee described the original poker course simply by saying, “There would have been daily poker matches and the students would have been asked to evaluate likelihoods of certain cards appearing, likelihoods of other people betting, and how much, et cetera.”
When asked about the predicted popularity of his course, Lavallee said, “I’m not sure about the first year. The first year definitely won’t be as popular as later years, just because the word needs to get out.” Lavallee also noted that the title of the course perhaps should be changed. His reasoning behind his wish to change the title of his course perhaps is that, “Games 4 Geeks,” does not nearly sum the interesting qualities of one of the more intriguing J-Term options available.

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