Weeks 1 and 2

WEEK 1

Our term began on March 4th with an introduction to our class, Advanced Analytical Techniques. On the first day, Professor Kris Wheaton gave a brief overview of what to expect throughout the term and what was expected of us as students. He passed out a list of dozens of methods/modifiers that we could choose from to study for the term. As I was perusing the list, most of the methods/modifiers had brief descriptions of each and nothing seemed to catch my attention. That is, until I reached game theory (which, by the way, did not have a description underneath).

All that I knew about game theory was what a zero-sum game is (to be detailed in a later post) or at least I heard of it before. Actually, that's not entirely true; I also knew that it was mathematically complex, but I was confident in my ability to grasp the concepts by the end of the term. But, since we did not have to decide what we wanted to study until the end of week 2 (we only had one class the first week), I decided I would do a little background research to make sure I actually wanted to study it, so I read the Wikipedia article.

As soon as I read it, I knew I had chosen the right subject. However, it was not because I was overly excited about game theory itself. On the contrary, I was excited about the possible range of topics that I could apply it to, which was the other requirement of the course. Specifically, I learned that game theory is used extensively in international relations, which just happens to be what my undergraduate background is in. Essentially, that's what happened during the first week; nothing out of the ordinary, thus, so far so good.

WEEK 2

This week turned out to be a wash, at least when it came to my research of game theory. You see, I'm also a member of the Competitive Intelligence club here in the department and we were quite fortunate to receive an invitation from SCIP (Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals) to come volunteer at their annual conference in Washington, DC. The conference lasted the entire second week of Spring Term (March 8-12). I had high hopes of getting some work done after the business day concluded, but, frankly, that was wishful thinking on my part. Let me just say that even though the conference was great, it was one of the most tiring weeks I have ever had to go through. And trust me, if you're enrolled in Mercyhurst College Institute of Intelligence Studies, you experience many weeks of extreme fatigue! But, at least I was able to lock down game theory as my subject for the term. Beginning in week three, that's when the real fun started...

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