The art of strategy

We begin with 10 tales of strategy from different aspects of life and offer preliminary thoughts on how best to play.Many of you will have faced similar problems in everyday life and reached the correct solution after some thought or trial and error...Imagine what would happen if there were some known formula that determined who would be audited by the IRS.Before you submitted a tax return,you could apply the formula to see if you would be audited.If an audit was predicted,but you could see a way to amend your return until the formula no longer predicted an audit,you probably would do so.If an audit was unavoidable,you would choose to tell the truth.The result of the IRS being completely predictable is that it would audit exactly the wrong people.All those audited would have anticipated their fate and chosen to act honestly,while those spared an audit would have only their consciences to watch over them.When the IRS audit formula is somewhat fuzzy,everyone stands some risk of an audit;this gives an added incentive for honesty.The importance of randomised strategies was one of the early insights of game theory ... It is not enough for a tennis player to know that he should mix his shots between the opponents forehand and backhand.He needs some idea of whether he should go to the forehand 30% or 64% of the time and how the answer depends on the relative strengths of the two sides... We think almost everything in life is a game,even things that might not seem that way at first.