My edge in cultural anthropology

Now that UCLA has rejected me, I am choosing between two excellent anthropology PhD programs, Stanford and Davis. Both are great places to study human behavioral ecology (and anthropology in general). It's rare for me to question my ability to succeed but -- to be candid -- I am daunted by the prospect of taking difficult anthropology classes with talented students who have been studying the field for years. I am most worried about cultural anthropology classes, especially at Stanford which is a Mecca for post-everything thought (post-modernism, post-colonialism, post-processualism in archaeology, etc.). Coming from physics, I anticipate significant "translation" difficulties. Fortunately, I've found an edge.

Whilst scanning my bookshelf for a book to read before heading to a Clippers game tonight, I came across my cache of books from the Classical Studies classes I took at Scripps. I have encountered significant "translation" difficulties before, just in historical contexts rather than ethnographic contexts. Earlier today I read the abstract for a talk on patronage in modern India given by a cultural anthropologist. Patronage?! Why that's a major theme of Roman history! I have plenty of material to draw from -- Petronius' Satyricon (hedonism, counter culture), Lucan's Civil War (violence, literary engagement with the state), Homer's Iliad/Odyssey (oral tradition)... the list goes on. So, I know I'll have to work hard to do well in my cultural classes, but I'm no longer particularly intimidated. In fact, my cultural classmates had better prepare for some difficult discussions of anthropological methodology vis a vis quantum ontology! The tables can be turned :).

Game theory and traffic court

I got jaywalking ticket about a month ago. I considered contesting is (what a dumb ticket!) but the fine wasn't big enough to make it worth taking a morning off work. Nevertheless, it spawned a very interesting idea. I was talking about the ticket with one of my co-workers yesterday. He described fighting a moving violation he'd received (much more expensive). One strategy is to re-schedule your court appearance at the last minute. In fact, you can re-schedule twice! This is a rich situation for game theoretic analysis.

To formalize things about... let's call the contester Player 1 and the policeman (or woman) Player 2 (although I prefer Hero and Darth Vader, respectively). Assume that Player 1 can reschedule at the absolute last minute with no personal cost, after Player 2 has committed to showing up. If Player 1 and 2 both show up at court, Player 1 has a probability p of succesfully contesting the ticket. Otherwise, Player 1 must pay Player 2 (e.g., the county) X dollars. The cost of showing up at court is Y dollars for both players, whether or not the other player shows up (travel, inconvenience, etc. -- actually, there's no good reason the cost must be Y to both; in fact, the opportunity costs may be relatively high for some contesters... such as lawyers and doctors).

If Player 1 shows up the case will be resolved one way or another. Therefore, Player 1 has three pure strategies: (A) show up on the first court date, (B) reschedule once and show up on the second court date, or (C) reschedule twice and show up on the third and final court date. Player 2 has eight potential pure strategies, since Player 2 can show up on any, all, or none of the court dates. I will number Player 2 strategies from zero to seven (think of it in binary)

Decimal Third Date Second Date First Date
0 0 0 0
1 0 0 1
2 0 1 0
3 0 1 1
4 1 0 0
5 1 0 1
6 1 1 0
7 1 1 1

This is enough of a framework to set up the optimization problem and solve for the optimal mixed strategies. I shall leave that as an exercise for the reader (OK, OK, I'm lazy :) ). I reall, really wonder how many academics have written papers on the game theoretic aspects of fighting traffic tickets. There must be a rich body of data to test models.

MHP