These pages are essentially my "Game Theory: An Introductory Sketch," with a few corrections. The second offering of my honors colloquium in 1997 caused me to consider a major rewriting and extension of it, which would incorporate more of the theory background for the examples, and some new ideas and examples. The outline in the frame to the left will suggest the scope of the revision I had in mind. However, none of the new material has been written. Nevertheless, I am returning the existing essays in this slightly changed form, moved mostly by the number and passion of the requests users have sent me. Well, the number, anyway. It had also seemed that there were errors to correct, and there were some, the original having been done in a great hurry; and in some of these cases I have taken the time to verify that the original was correct. If I have missed any substantive errors, please let me know.
So these pages join the mass of Web documents that are perpetually "under construction." The topics on the left that have been written have hyperlinks in the contents screen to the left. Some of the others have been incorporated in my book.
| The book is currently out of print. Used copies may be available. at Amazon, Game Theory: A Non-Technical Introduction to the Analysis of Strategy at Barnes and Noble -- of course! Game Theory: A Non-Technical Introduction to the Analysis of Strategy |
Fifty years old and newly prominent, thanks to the 1994 Nobel Memorial prize to Nash,
Selten and Harsanyi; and to the 2005 prize to Aumann and Schelling; game theory and
its application to economics are finding their way into undergraduate curricula.
The accessibility of the texts available has improved accordingly. However, as I
began to teach game theory to students who, while very good students, mostly are
not economics majors, I felt that the available texts are still not really accessible
enough. More advanced game theory has been extensively covered elsewhere. Morton
Davis' Game Theory: A Non-Technical Introduction seems to remain the
only discussion at quite the right level of accessibility, but its range of coverage
is no longer quite what I need, and never was really geared to economics.
Accordingly, this document may be useful as a supplement to the existing texts, as a means of making the basic ideas a bit more accessible. Anyway, that is the objective. Accordingly, I have tried to limit these pages to fairly elementary topics and to avoid mathematics other than numerical tables and a very little algebra. The presentation is as intuitive as I have been able to make it, and keep it brief. I welcome suggestions as to how to make it better.
Roger A. McCain 