A Bayesian hierarchical model for inferring player strategy types in a number guessing game

This paper presents an in-depth statistical analysis of an experiment designed to measure the extent to which players in a simple game behave according to a popular behavioral economic model. The p-beauty contest is a multi-player number guessing game that has been widely used to study strategic behavior. This paper describes beauty contest experiments for an audience of data analysts, with a special focus on a class of models for game play called k-step thinking models, which allow each player in the game to employ an idiosyncratic strategy. We fit a Bayesian statistical model to estimate the proportion of our player population whose game play is compatible with a k-step thinking model. Our findings put this number at approximately 25%.