From the fascinating Journal of Humanistic Mathematics: a piece on "Learning and Doing Mathematics through Fiction Writing:"
For many students, learning and doing math in school equals doing only problem sets. More advanced or motivated students may end up writing research papers. The math stories approach is more egalitarian because students of any level in terms of math background can write stories in which math plays some role. In fact, in writing their stories, students may end up wanting to learn new topics in math if they are integral to the plot. For example, someone writing a spy story involving secret codes might find it useful to learn more about number theory and cryptography.
And
The math stories approach lends itself to interdisciplinary instruction. Not too long ago, a math professor and a dance professor at my university collaborated to teach about the geometry of dancing. I can see some- thing similar for teaching math fiction writing, some kind of collaborative effort between math professors and English professors, for instance. Such interdisciplinary collaboration may be a great way to introduce math-averse literature students to the elegance of math; at the same time, such courses may open the eyes of literature-averse math students to the rich world of fiction, poetry, and storytelling.
The article is about teaching game theory.
Resources for thinking, teaching, and exploring mathematical fiction are here.
Game theory--the study of how people make choices while interacting with others--is one of the most popular technical approaches in social science today. But as Michael Chwe reveals in his insightful new book, Jane Austen explored game theory's core ideas in her six novels roughly two hundred years ago. Jane Austen, Game Theorist shows how this beloved writer theorized choice and preferences, prized strategic thinking, argued that jointly strategizing with a partner is the surest foundation for intimacy, and analyzed why superiors are often strategically clueless about inferiors. With a diverse range of literature and folktales, this book illustrates the wide relevance of game theory and how, fundamentally, we are all strategic thinkers.
Although game theory's mathematical development began in the Cold War 1950s, Chwe finds that game theory has earlier subversive historical roots in Austen's novels and in "folk game theory" traditions, including African American folktales. Chwe makes the case that these literary forebears are game theory's true scientific predecessors. He considers how Austen in particular analyzed "cluelessness"--the conspicuous absence of strategic thinking--and how her sharp observations apply to a variety of situations, including U.S. military blunders in Iraq and Vietnam.
That is the description, in Amazon, of this book. It looks great! HT: Marginal Revolution.
Protection declines when public information is greater.
The origen of the concept:
Bhagwati (1988, p. 85) has expressed optimism that protectionism can be limited by what [he] call[s] the Dracula effect: exposing evil to sunlight helps destroy it.
That is from the paper "Heterogeneous Information and Trade Policy" by Giacomo A. M. Ponzetto
I call this the unintended consequences of Bram Stoker's imagination.
