Brad DeLong

Three’s a Crowd — The Nash Equilibrium, Computer Science, and Economics (and what it means for Project Management theory)

Over the last couple of weeks reading picked up on an interesting article via Brad DeLong’s blog, who picked it up from Larry Hardesty at MIT News.  First a little background devoted to defining terms.  The Nash Equilibrium is a part of Game Theory in measuring how and why people make choices in social networks.  As defined in this Columbia University paper:

A game (in strategic or normal form) consists of the following three elements: a set of players, a set of actions (or pure-strategies) available to each player, and a payoff (or utility) function for each player. The payoff functions represent each player’s preferences over action profiles, where an action profile is simply a list of actions, one for each player. A pure-strategy Nash equilibrium is an action profile with the property that no single player can obtain a higher payoff by deviating unilaterally from this profile.

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Walk This Way — DoD IG Reviews DCMA Contracting Officer Business Systems Deficiencies

The sufficiency and effectiveness of business systems is an essential element in the project management ecosystem.  Far beyond performance measurement of the actual effort, the sufficiency of the business systems to support the effort are essential in its success.  If the systems in place do not properly track and record the transactions behind the work being performed, the credibility of the data is called into question.  Furthermore, support and logistical systems, such as procurement, supply, and material management, contribute in a very real way, to work accomplishment.  If that spare part isn’t in-house on time, the work stops.

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Family Affair — Part III — Private Monopsony, Monopoly, and the Disaccumulation of Capital

It’s always good to be ahead of the power curve.  I see that the eminent Paul Krugman had an editorial in the New York Times about the very issues that I’ve dealt with in this blog, his example in this case being Amazon.  This is just one of many articles that have been raised about the monopsony power as a result of the Hatchette controversy.  In The New Republic Franklin Foer also addresses this issue at length in the article “Amazon Must Be Stopped.”  In my last post on this topic I discussed public monopsony, an area in which I have a great deal of expertise.  But those of us in the information world that are not Microsoft, Oracle, Google, or one of the other giants also live in the world of private monopsony.

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Take Me Out to the Ballgame — Tournaments and Games of Failure

“Baseball teaches us, or has taught most of us, how to deal with failure. We learn at a very young age that failure is the norm in baseball and, precisely because we have failed, we hold in high regard those who fail less often – those who hit safely in one out of three chances and become star players. I also find it fascinating that baseball, alone in sport, considers errors to be part of the game, part of it’s rigorous truth.” — Fay Vincent, former Commissioner of Baseball (1989-1992)

“Baseball is a game of inches.”  — Branch Rickey, Quote Magazine, July 31, 1966

I have been a baseball fan just about as long as I have been able to talk.  My father played the game and tried out for both what were the New York Giants and Yankees–and was a pretty well known local hero in Weehawken back in the 1930s and 1940s.  I did not have my father’s athletic talents–a four letter man in high school–but I was good at hitting a baseball from the time he put a bat in my hands and so I played–and was sought after–into my college years.  Still, like many Americans who for one reason or another could not or did not pursue the game, I live vicariously through the players on the field.  We hold those who fail less in the game in high regard.  Some of them succeed for many years and are ensconced in the Hall of Fame.

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