HANNAH FRY: So today we're going to talk about rock-paper-scissors.
And I reckon everyone knows how to play it.
Scissors beats paper, paper covers rock, rock blunts scissors, so three… Wait, I always thought it smashed them?
Oh, I thought it blunts them.
Actually, if anything, it would probably sharpen them, right?
There are three strategies, each one of them loses once and wins once.
So it looks like there's no strategy that you can play to win.
But I'm going to show you about a new paper that had just come out where it gives you some top tips of how to win.
So it's a group of Chinese scientists, Where they run an experiment, Where they got 360 students to play games of rock-paper-scissors with one another.
300 rounds in every game, Which took up to 2 hours, which is astonishing.
