Atishoo! Atishoo! We all fall down.

[robinturner]

I can now add playing ring-a-ring-of-roses to my list of Silly Things I Have Done in Class. My course this semester is entitled "The Psychology and Philosophy of Games". Actually, I was just going to call it "Games", but I needed to put in some long words to discourage the "D" students from signing up. The first group of readings concern definitions of "game" (Wittgenstein is there, of course), so as a way of introducing the idea and explaining the course content I drew up a list of games that I would and wouldn't be looking at, and asked students to see if they could detect my criteria. Of course, being Turkish students, they didn't know what ring-a-ring-of-roses was, so I had them merrily dancing around. Maybe I'll play Chinese Tangles in the next lesson.

For the curious, these are the two lists.

IN: chess, go, poker, backgammon, D&D, GTA, America's Army.
OUT: football, roulette, bingo, boxing, ring-a-ring-of-roses.

Comments

Talking of the 'black 'death'...

[ankh156.livejournal.com]

How do you know if you've got bird-flu ? (I know, horribly topical :

1. Coughing and sneezing
2. Fever
3. Aching joints
3. An inexplicable urge to shit on someone's windscreen

Re: Talking of the 'black 'death'...

[solri.livejournal.com]

Hah - I was waiting for the bird flu jokes to come in!
I saw a nice cartoon in a Turkish newspaper with a cow talking to a chicken, saying "Don't take it personally - they used to say I was crazy."

[cf.livejournal.com]

what about american football? hmm?

[solri.livejournal.com]

I'm excluding any games where physical capability is a major factor (i.e. sports). Of course all games include some physical action, even if it's just moving a piece on a board or clicking a mouse, but I have to draw a line somewhere. It's not that I don't regard football (even American football) as a proper game; it's just that including sports would make the topic too broad to cover in one semester.

Incidentally, I started watching American football back in the 1980s, but I gave up because I'm not good engouh at mathematics ;-)

games

[maggie-lucy.livejournal.com]

Bringing in Berne would be too complicated!

Re: games

[solri.livejournal.com]

Indeed, though if students want to research him for their term paper, they're welcome (one research option I'm giving them is to choose an area of life which behaves as though it were a game). I've just finished the penultimate chapter in Bernard Suits' The Grasshopper in which he claims that either Berne is talking gibberish, or he's using the word "game" in a very odd sense. This is because it is essential to Suits' view of games that the procedures of the game must be non-optimal in pursuing the stated end of the game. For example, a foot race disbars the most efficient means of crossing the finishing line, which is to sprint across the infield; golf eschews the most efficient method of filling holes with golf balls in favour of employing an instrument uniquely unsuited to the purpose.

[vret.livejournal.com]

I did courses on Game Theory in the Operational Research part of my degree. Are you going to cover John von Neumann?

[solri.livejournal.com]

I won't be covering game theory in class, but students can choose it as a research subject if they want.

[vret.livejournal.com]

I suppose the maths can be a bit intimidating for arts grads :-)