Lots of time I get asked who I think will win the election. This time we have something different:
On Dec 8, 2015, at 2:59 AM, ** wrote:
Hello Mr Gelman,
I am writing you on behalf of ** Online Media **.
We are a special service that finds the best experts to answer the questions our readers ask us.
Right now we have this question: “Under which circumstances and for which reasons was the game Rock-Paper-Scissors invented?”. And I have seen that you have done research on this game and wanted to ask if you could help us with this question.
Do you think you could please help us out with this question?
My reply:
Hi, thanks for asking but I have no idea! I have heard the game is popular in Japan so maybe it was invented there.
But you are an expert: https://www.google.com/search?q=Rock-Paper-Scissors+andrew+gelman&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
Fernando:
No, I’m a Freud expert.
Ha! And also an expert on chocolate: https://www.google.com/search?q=chocolate+andrew+gelman&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
Here is an idea for an expertise bot:
1. Enter name of proposed expert (e.g. Andrew Gelman)
2. Google [Andrew Gelman] + [each item in Encyclopedia Britannica]
3. Report all positive results as fields of expertise.
I think this is pretty much what interns looking for expert opinion are doing in a decentralized agent-based fashion.
Were you even slightly tempted to cut and paste the Wikipedia article and send it back?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock-paper-scissors
Zbicyclist:
I was thinking of checking wikipedia but then I figured that the reporter can do that, it’s not my job!
Actually writing algorithms for Rock Paper Scissors is a lot of fun. See here:
http://www.rpscontest.com/leaderboard
I actually looked into research on this when I was giving a Nerdnite talk about transitivity. There’s a paper
http://ir.minpaku.ac.jp/dspace/handle/10502/750
by a Finnish ethnologist who says it was originally Chinese.
And, yes, I found the paper from the Wikipedia links.