Harvard. Reading List and Final Exam for Games and Strategy.

Irwin Collier:

ANSWER ALL FIVE QUESTIONS: The first two questions should take no more than ten or twenty minutes each, allowing at least forty-five minutes each for the last three.

  1. The following entry was submitted to the PUNCH “Toby competition” calling for an “unpleasing codicil to a will,” and received a runner-up award in the issue of July 6, 1960:

To my daughter, Judith Georgina Margaret, I leave my house, land and all my worldly possessions therein on the condition that it should be run as either an hotel, a college for gardeners or a rest-house for disappointed Beatniks.

My cash and capital are to be put into a trust. My widow, three daughters and nine grandchildren will each have an equal share in the trust. No income or capital can be drawn from the trust until the will is contested by a legatee. If this happens, the contesting legatee will lose his share to the others. If the others pay compensation for this loss, all capital will go untied to a charity.

Describe and discuss in game-theoretical terms the arrangement described in the second paragraph. Draw a matrix to represent it. (For purposes of the matrix, you may reduce the number of legatees to two.) Include, with respect to the two-person matrix, any pertinent references to a “solution,” “equilibrium point,” dominant or dominated strategies, or “efficiency” of outcome.