rps_main.m is a MATLab function that simulates interactions in a Rock Paper Scissors game. There are three different strategies that are written into the sim, random, where any individual may interact with any other individual, locals only, where individuals may only play against one of the eight people seated around themselves, and raise your hand which is a variant of locals only that allows sqaures to play against other squares that are far away if and only if all of their local neighbors have already played.

This loosely approximates the biological system of Uta stansburiana which was first described by Barry Sinervo (B. Sinervo and C. M. Livley (1996) Nature 340:240-243) at UCSC. More information about the Uta system is available here.

This software and these movies were developed after I ran a real life version of the game in a class of 18 students (the lecture is available here). The small number of students participating made the example less than awesome and I wanted to see if it would be better in a larger classroom setting. Though it looks like it could work, the amount of time required to run it in a lecture hall seems to preclude it from being done live. Instead, I offer these movies, which provide information about the location of the strategies in the classroom. Knowing where the strategies are in a live classroom wouldn't be possible. So the movies are better. Trust me.