Hi Duncan, and glad you think it worthwhile. While I know very little
about accounting, one use that occurred to me is as a scenario generator.
Build a more comprehensive robot trader, with some random choices built
in, leave it to run for some time, and record its accounts as well as
those of all the shops. Since no money enters or leaves the system, that
inside the system will be constant. I presume there are now tools that
check related accounts against one another for such consistency
conditions; if so, the generated scenarios could be used to give practice
with these.
At a more advanced level, you could introduce notions of depreciation, and
also arbitrary price fluctuations (via the diamond market).
And finally, you should be able to use it - a different emphasis here -
with suitably programmed traders, as a setting in which to demonstrate
rational choice, utility maximisation, goal and resource tradeoffs, and so
on. This would be a kind of halfway stage between the schematic
spreadsheet models we did for the VLA, and a full-blown Sim City-style
microsimulation.
Yes, tachgraphs can be built in. As can a large amount of uncertainty.
There's a framework there for generating such events as petrol blockades,
floods cutting off sections of road, and all kinds of other unpredictable
event.
Much of the reason for writing this - as with the story generator I
recently posted about - is just to make learning fun.
Jocelyn Paine
http://www.j-paine.org
http://www.virtual-worlds.biz
+44 (0)7768 534 091
On Tue, 27 May 2003, Duncan Williamson wrote:
> That looks interesting Jocelyn and although I haven't found the board or
> game that intuitive within my first five minutes, there certainly is a lot
> of potential for development as an accounting, economics, strategy,
> logistics, marketing resource, among others: tachographs could be built in
> too?
>
> Let me know of all interest and we can virtually get together to sort it
> all out at some time!
>
> Duncan Williamson
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Economics, business, and related subjects [mailto:ECON-BUSINESS-
> [log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Jocelyn Paine
> Sent: 26 May 2003 22:41
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Online game of buying and selling goods: useful to anyone?
>
> Some time ago, I wrote a game for teaching Artificial Intelligence. This
> was a computerised board game, a bit like Monopoly, where competitors had
> to drive a lorry round a board equipped with shops selling and buying goods
> at various prices in order to make a profit. Or to be more accurate, the
> students had to _program_ the lorries and then compete them against one
> another, thereby learning some skills in expert systems and other AI
> techniques.
>
> I didn't write this with economics and business in mind, but I wonder
> whether it would be useful for such, perhaps in accounting? The game was
> tuned quite carefully so that one had to be reasonably skilful in order to
> make a profit and avoid being seduced by short-term gains. If interested,
> have a look at:
> A Web interface to the game
> http://www.j-paine.org/cgi-bin/traveller.php
>
> About the game's design. Details of how it was tuned
> are near the end of the article.
> http://www.j-paine.org/traveller/design.html
>
> Jocelyn Paine
> http://www.j-paine.org
> http://www.virtual-worlds.biz
> +44 (0)7768 534 091
>
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