Does Playing Against an Error Prone Opponent Influence Learning in Nim?

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Date

2014-04-01

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Private Enterprise Research Center, Texas A&M University

Abstract

When learning to play a game well, does it help to play against an opponent who makes the same sort of mistakes one tends to make or is it better to play against a procedurally rational algorithm, which never makes mistakes? This paper investigates subject performance in the game of Nim. We nd evidence that subject performance improves more when playing against a human opponent than against a procedurally rational algorithm. We also nd that subjects learn to recognize certain heuristics that improve their overall performance in more complex games.

Description

PoliticalEconomy

Keywords

1401, Bounded rationality, Learning, Heuristics, Perfect Information, Nim, Human Behavior, Experiment, PoliticalEconomy

Citation