An MIT professor opened his first lecture by auctioning off a sealed box to twenty-two-year-olds who had zero information about what was inside.
No touching it. No shaking it. No hints. Just a box.
The bidding started at $1. It closed at $45.
He ripped it open. An iPod Nano, retail value $149. The class had priced an unknown object, sight unseen, at roughly a third of its real worth — in about ninety seconds, with nothing but each other's bids to go on.
That's minute twenty of session one of 15.401, Finance Theory, taught by Andrew Lo at MIT Sloan. Free. On YouTube. Since 2008.