{"id":4015,"date":"2019-02-06T08:00:49","date_gmt":"2019-02-06T15:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/?p=4015"},"modified":"2019-02-06T09:34:06","modified_gmt":"2019-02-06T16:34:06","slug":"why-running-is-becoming-more-boring-breakdown-game-theory-style","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/2019\/02\/06\/why-running-is-becoming-more-boring-breakdown-game-theory-style\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Running is Becoming (more) Boring; Breakdown Game Theory Style"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you have ever been to a cross country race, or a track meet, you know endurance running is boring. \u00a0Runners can be going very slow and it\u2019s hard to know how impressive it is, especially the races that take 20+ minutes. Recently championship races are getting harder and harder to watch, races that had audiences that spanned outside the running community. \u00a0Specifically, I\u2019m talking about races such as the olympics, D1 nationals or the IAAF championship. The short answer: the races have been getting slower. The confusing part is that the\u00a0runners<\/em> are not getting slower, just these races<\/span>.\u00a0 The type of running that is leading to these slow races is “Strategic Running”<\/span><\/p>\n

Strategic running is referring to the a method of running that focuses on winning. \u00a0This is when you conserve your energy until the end of the race and right before the end you sprint (This is called kicking). \u00a0This strategy doesn\u2019t guarantee you the win but it gives you the best shot.\u00a0 It certainly will always beat someone running an honest race. When everyone in the race runs strategically, the race becomes very slow.\u00a0 We saw this in the 1500m at the last olympics, which was the slowest olympic 1500m in history.<\/span><\/p>\n

We\u2019re all familiar with the alternative choice to strategic running.\u00a0 Running as hard as you can for the whole race (honest racing). \u00a0This strategy leads to world records and incredible performances, the problem is\u00a0 strategic running doesn\u2019t win.\u00a0 Runners can still kick and usually do.\u00a0 These are the runners the hold the WRs and win the race. It only takes one or two runners in a race to make it \u201chonest.\u201d \u00a0A couple runners start the race at a fast pace and the other racers will have no choice but to keep up.\u00a0 These races are exciting suspenseful, and awesome, but they’re getting rarer and rarer.<\/span><\/p>\n

The game theory model we are going to create is one that uses two runner\u2019s decisions in the race; runner1 and runner2, with two options; kick or honest. \u00a0The utility will be as follows; 1st = 4u, 4th=1u, Fast Time(At least one runner chooses honest) = 1u, Same Strategy = 3u. We\u2019re making the assumption that if you run honest, and get kicked down, you will get kicked down by 3 runners and get 4th.\u00a0 It would be more fitting to have an uncertain outcome for “same strategy” , but for simplicity we gave it 3u.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
<\/td>\nRunner2<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Runner1<\/span><\/td>\n<\/td>\nHONEST<\/span><\/td>\nKICK<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
HONEST<\/span><\/td>\n(3+1) = 4u, (3+1) = 4u<\/span><\/td>\n(1+1) = 2u, (4+1) = 5u<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
KICK<\/span><\/td>\n(4+1) = 5u,(1+1) = 2u<\/span><\/td>\n3,3<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

 <\/p>\n

Any economist can tell that the nash equilibrium is for both runner to kick, leading to that slow boring strategic race I\u2019ve been talking about. \u00a0Before I move on, let me explain why. If a runner runs honest it is the optimal choice for the other runner to kick; allowing the kicker to win and have the fast time. \u00a0If a runner kicks it is still optimal for the other runner to kick and give themselves the best opportunity to win. This kind of decision making is leading to slow races. \u00a0This last olympics Matthew Centrowitz won the 1500 meter in the slowest time ever to win the olympics. Mo Farah won the 10,000m run and the 5,000m at the London olympics using the kick strategy as well. \u00a0Both of these runners ran slow races, but they won the gold medal.<\/span><\/p>\n

World records are still being broken, just not at championship races like the olympics. \u00a0That is because of the weighted utility. These races have utility focused winning(like our model), think about how much utility you have from getting a gold medal. \u00a0The lesser known races have a lower utility for winning but the same utility for fast times. The shift incentives honest races. However, until olympic athletes start making tough choices we\u2019re stuck with these slow races. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you have ever been to a cross country race, or a track meet, you know endurance running is boring. \u00a0Runners can be going very slow and it\u2019s hard to know how impressive it is, especially the races that take 20+ minutes. Recently championship races are getting harder and harder to watch, races that had audiences that spanned outside the running community. \u00a0Specifically, I\u2019m talking about races such as the olympics, D1 nationals or the IAAF championship. The short answer: the races have been getting slower. The confusing part is that the\u00a0runners are not getting slower, just these races.\u00a0 The Continue reading Why Running is Becoming (more) Boring; Breakdown Game Theory Style<\/span>→<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":581,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,188,80],"class_list":["post-4015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-decision-making","tag-game-theory","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/581"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4015"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4015\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4018,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4015\/revisions\/4018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}