Lost and Found

Dec. 19, 2006— -- Will a Nobel Prize-winning theory of human behavior hold true in everyday situations? Is it a successful formula for people trying to lose weight or search for a stranger? Two extraordinary experiments put the theory to the test.

If you have no idea who people are or what they look like, how would you find them?

That was the challenge facing six pairs of volunteers taking part in a social experiment at six different locations around Washington, D.C.: the National Cathedral, the National Zoo, RFK Stadium, on a shuttle flight from New York to Reagan National Airport, on a commuter train from Maryland to D.C.'s Union Station, and on a boat cruising up the Potomac to the docks in Georgetown. The instructions were simple:

There is another pair of people looking for you today, somewhere in Washington. They are strangers to you, as you are to them. Your job is to find them. How you do it is completely up to you.

"Primetime" gave each pair $100 for expenses, and told them to keep in mind three questions:

Where will you meet them?

At what time will you meet them?

How will you recognize one another?

Yale professor Barry Nalebuff summed up the enormity of the challenge by saying, "Look, it's hard enough to find somebody in Bloomingdale's!"

But -- as he tells students in his classes at the Yale School of Management -- there is a way for them to solve the problem. They can use game theory.

Game theory is a Nobel Prize-winning idea. "It is the science of strategy," says Nalebuff. "It's recognizing that the success of what you do depends on what other people do."