Minimax-Regret Strategy for Class Attendance

Going to class is hard. No one really likes doing it, but for some reason many of us college students drag ourselves out of bed every weekday to sit in lecture for what adds up to several hours per day. I'm going to be honest with you all, my first year I skipped class a lot. It was pretty bad. However, my second year and this year so far, I have been really good about attending all my classes. What sparked this change, you may ask? Maturity? Realizing the value of learning? Remembering how much tuition costs? Nope, it was none of those.

Instead, it was fear of maximum regret. Every time I would skip class my first year, I would worry about whether or not my professor was teaching something incredibly important that day that would cause me to do terribly on future assignments/exams if I missed it. While many would say that students should always attend class for many reasons, most students realize pretty quickly that on some days, the material that is taught is very easy to understand and something you could have easily taught yourself, therefore it is not worth it to go to lecture. The problem is that I was and still am unsure as to which lectures will be pointless and which ones will actually be helpful to my learning and understanding the course material, thus giving me anxiety whenever I skipped my first year because I didn't know if I was missing something important or not.

Though I didn't realize it at the time, I ended up conducting a minimax-regret strategy (see chart below), which I still use to this day, to decide how to best curb my worrying. I found that there were four possible scenarios that could occur and assigned a value of regret to each one. Scenario 1) is that I attend class and the professor actually teaches important material, therefore the lecture is important. In this scenario, my regret level would be 0 because by going to class, I would be able to absorb and understand the important material that was taught, so I would have no regrets about attending. Scenario 2) is that I attend class but the lecture ends up being pointless and teaching nothing important. In this case, my regret level would be equal to the cost (C) that I incurred by going to class — this could be waking up early, walking a long distance to the classroom, etc. Scenario 3) is that I skip class and the lecture is pointless, resulting in my regret level being 0 because I didn’t miss anything important by skipping and I did not have to incur the cost of actually going to class. Scenario 4) is that I skip class and the professor teaches something important, therefore lecture is important. Here, my regret level would be equal to the benefit (B) of going to class minus the cost (C) of going to class since I didn’t incur the cost (C) of attending class but I was missing out on the benefit (B) of attending since I missed the important material. Scenario 4) has the maximum level of regret out of all four scenarios because to me, the benefit (B) of going to class when something important is taught is more than double the cost (C) of attending since I want to have good grades way more than I don't want to wake up early or walk to class. Therefore, my priority is to avoid experiencing this maximum level of regret and because I do not know when lecture will be important or pointless, the minimax-regret strategy is to always attend class, hence why I started and have continued to do so since first year.