Modern game theory has helped us understand how and why we make decisions. Game theory provides startling insights into all endeavors in which humans cooperate or compete, including biology, computer science, politics, agriculture, and economics.

Game theory is an example.

• has become an invaluable tool for economists, underpinning the theories of five Nobel Prize winners in economics;
• helps corporate decision makers through the alternatives of complex negotiations where thousands of jobs and billions of dollars may be at stake;
• plays a crucial role in international diplomacy and military strategy, influencing the fates of nations even when that influence may well be invisible to the uninitiated; and
• provides insights into the origins of human behaviors, not only for psychologists seeking to understand why we act as we do, but also for evolutionary biologists asking how those patterns of actions—as human strategies—were handed down.

You can see game theory at work in the interactions you engage in every day, such as buying a car, or a less obvious one, like trying to decide where to go on a Saturday night.

A basic working knowledge of this profoundly important tool can allow us to make better decisions in our own lives or better understand the decisions facing other players in games. In. Game Theory in Life, Business, and Beyond is a book about games people play. Professor Scott P. Stevens of James Madison University has designed a course that anyone can take. He presents the basics of game theory in a way that is engaging and easy to understand in 24 insightful lectures.

More complex interactions are built on the basic games.

Any game can be described as an interaction involving two or more players who share a common knowledge about the game’s structure and make rational decisions about the strategies that will best achieve the maximum possible payoff.

Along the pathways that lead from that basic description to the far more complex games that can be built from it, you find a fascinating collection of questions. Is it possible that players are not aware of what others are doing? Is it sequential, with each player’s decision following another’s? Is it possible to have binding agreements between players? Is chance involved? Do all players have the same information? Basic analytical tools are required for planning a strategy and for games to take different forms.

Professor Stevens shows you how to use those tools by playing several classic games, each involving two players who can make one of two choices. Professor Stevens shows how these games happen everywhere, from casual life to business to international diplomacy.

• Chicken , derived from the game in which two drivers race toward each other to see who will swerve first. This game is one in which neither player wants to yield to the other—even when a “collision” is the worst possible outcome. In science fields such as biology, this game is known as the Hawk-Dove game.
• Stag Hunt , also know as the assurance game. This game involves making a choice between individual safety and risky cooperation. The idea behind this game—involving two hunters who must decide whether to hunt a hare alone or a stag together—was developed by the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
• Prisoner’s Dilemma , a famous situation and perhaps the most important in all of game theory. This game involves two prisoners being separately interrogated for their common crime. Each must decide whether to confess or remain silent, knowing his partner has the same choice.

They each get a one-year sentence if they confess. Each gets three years if they confess. If only one admits, he goes free, but his partner goes away for five years.

This game, in which logic points to a strategy for each prisoner that is clearly best, yet still provides a worse outcome, surfaces repeatedly in the course, as it does in real life.

These lectures make clear that that isn’t unusual. Practical applications of the ideas that underlie game theory are frequently seen.

• You see game theory at work in business, explaining the moves in the billion-dollar chess game between Boeing and Airbus over control of the market for medium-sized, medium-range jets.
• And you see it used in war, exploring the choices that faced U.S. and Japanese commanders as each side decided how best to deploy its weapons: the waiting force of U.S. bombers and the Japanese convoy that knew it was the bombers’ target.

Meet the most important minds in game theory.

Just as these lectures introduce you to game theory’s most important ideas, they also introduce you to many of its most important minds.

• John von Neumann , whose 1944 book Theory of Games and Economic Behavior , written with Oscar Morgenstern, made him arguably the founding father of modern game theory
• John Nash , whose story was told in the film A Beautiful Mind and whose achievements have helped make him one of the best-known game theorists
• Kenneth Arrow , whose famous “impossibility theory” proved that designing a fundamentally unflawed voting system is essentially impossible
• Barry Nalebuff and Adam Brandenberger , whose 1996 book on Co-Opetition offered modern business an innovative rethinking of the competitiveness.

Game Theory has basic ideas.

A basic understanding of how numbers operate and interact is what this course requires. Each lecture is given in it’s entirety. People play games. The graphics help you understand the mathematical ideas underlying the field of study. Professor Stevens makes the subject matter easy to understand despite the complexity of game theory.

It was taught with relish and wit by a teacher who was easy to understand. People play games. The games are hidden at the core of the most complex arenas of corporate negotiations and foreign policy, as well as the most basic encounters of our daily lives.

Course Lecture Titles

1. There is a world of game theory. 2. The nature of the game. 3. There arequential games on the real life chessboard. 4. The 2 x 2 Classic Games are life’s little games. 5. Guessing right with simultaneous move games. 6. There are practical applications of game theory. 7. A random walk. There are 8. The games are pure competition. There are 9. There are mixed strategies and nonzero-sum games. 10. There are threats, promises, and commitments. 11. Credibility, Deterrence, and Compellence. There is 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 Information is incomplete and imperfect. 13 Whom can you trust? There are 14. Incentives to encourage productivity. 15. There are repeated games of the persistence of memory. 16. Does this stuff work? 17 There was a tragedy in the Commons. 18. Evolutionary game theory is related to games in motion. 19 Game Theory and Economics are related. 20. The will of the people can be determined by voting. 21. There are auctions and the winner’s curse. 22. Bargaining and cooperative games. It was 23. Business and game theory are related. 24. All the world is a game.