By Trudy Stewart,  Journal staff
Stevens Point Journal
1-9-02

Game theory has little to do with Game Boy, students found out Monday  in Advanced Placement Economics classes at Stevens Point Area Senior High School.    "A Beautiful Mind," the new movie about Nobel Prize-winning economist  John Forbes Nash Jr., and game theory came more clearly into focus during a lecture given by Larry Weiser, a professor of business and economics at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.  

Game theory is a way to study human behavior through mathematics, economics, and other social and behavioral sciences. The "games" have titles such as Subsidized Small Business, Mutually Assured Destruction and Frogs Call for Mates, which are analogies for interactions in human society such as market competition, arms races and environmental pollution.   "I thought the movie was pretty good and would give it a grade of B,"   Weiser said. "As an economist, I was a little concerned that people would get their information about Nash only from the movie when it's not entirely accurate. On the other hand, I think it's a well-done movie, and I appreciate Hollywood trying to deal with serious subjects including economic theory." 

Weiser, who presented the lecture to two of SPASH teacher Wayne McCaffery's classes,  is director of the Center for Economic Education. The center is part of Economics Wisconsin, a state organization of educators who work with K-12 teachers to help them be more comfortable with the economics aspects of their subjects.  "I think I'll go see the movie this weekend," said Brandon Flugaur of Stevens Point, a student in the AP economics class. "I'm very  interested in economics, and I did some research on my own because of the movie."  "A Beautiful Mind" opened on Friday at Rogers Campus Cinema 4.  Australian actor Russell Crowe portrays Nash, a mathematician diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, who was a winner of the Nobel Prize for economics in 1994. 

The film covers 46 years in the life of Nash, who was debilitated for more than 20 years by the mental illness, was hospitalized a number of times and received a variety of treatments.  "Nash made a very important contribution to game theory, but he did not invent it," Weiser said. "He extended the range of game theory and extended the number of situations it could be applied to."  Most of Nash's important work was done before he began to have the delusions that made it impossible for him to continue in his academic post at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  "There are several reasons I am interested in this film," Weiser said. "One is that I am an economist and familiar with his work, and the other reason is that I have a niece who is schizophrenic. She is a wonderful young woman, but she struggles with this disease."

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