Showing posts with label tool. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tool. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Economics - game theory guru - Roger Myerson




Game theory is a tool used to understand decisions made in situations involving several players. These situations range from wars to family relationships, from president election to bargaining in the black market. Businesses also use game theory to make strategic decisions

One guru on game theory is Roger Myerson. He is a professor at the University of Chicago. I find the following pages on his website interesting

- Academic papers marrying public policy and political decision-making with economics

- Excel add-ins that add statistical functions for Monte Carlo simulation and risk analysis. His tools supplement Excel's weakness in probabilistic calculations. The add-ins allow users to generate Poisson, beta, gamma and log-normal distributions, as well as some other analytical features

- Syllabus of graduate-level economics classes at the University of Chicago. Here I got a chance to learn what the teach in one of the world's best school of economics

- Roger Myerson's Curriculum vitae (CV in pdf). To become a prominent academic is not easy. The long list of positions held and papers published helped me realize this. If I were to go into academia, better be ready for that. It's also fun going through his professional journey on paper


More information on game theory
Wikipedia entry

Gametheory.net

- Books, academic papers, and online games on game theory for professors, students and practitioners

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Flight timetable software

For frequent fliers, finding the best route is a constant headache. People always want to find flights that

Meet their time schedule
- For those who travel during the week, flights departing 7 - 9pm are the best. Then you can work the whole day in one city, travel to another and start the next day

Have the least number of stops, or ideally, non-stop

Have the best timed connections
- You don't want to wait in Heathrow for 8 hours for your connecting flight. Examples of well-timed connection are flights from Taipei to Shanghai, via Jeju Island. Barring direct flights, this is the shortest route between Taiwan and Mainland China, with travel time just ~4 hours

These are some tools that help you plan your trips. Using these programs, you can look at flights and find the route that best fits your need. An handy feature of these programs is that you can use them on the go, without the Internet. The timetables are downloaded automatically when you're online, and are stored in your computer. They also support Palm and PocketPC

Star Alliance trip planner

Skyteam trip planner

OneWorld trip planner