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Life as a game Theory II
INTRODUCTION: GAMES, GAMES EVERYWHERE
No man is an island, entire of itself. (John Donne, seventeenth-century English poet)
When people speak of “games,” they are usually talking about amusements, like checkers and Monopoly, or sports, like football or basketball. But in the branch of mathematics known as “game theory,” we speak of games in a much broader sense.
Definition: Game
A situation is a “game” whenever (i) more than one person is making a decision and (ii) people’s decisions impact one another.
Just about everything we do in life is a game in the game-theory sense. At home, at school, everywhere we go, and just about everything we do, we are playing games. Do not believe me? Think back to the very beginning of your day, when you woke up. How quickly you got out of bed impacted your parents—and how early they woke you up impacted you—so that was a game! Think about what happened next, throughout the rest of the day. From the bathroom to the breakfast table, in the classroom and on the playground, you make...
No man is an island, entire of itself. (John Donne, seventeenth-century English poet)
When people speak of “games,” they are usually talking about amusements, like checkers and Monopoly, or sports, like football or basketball. But in the branch of mathematics known as “game theory,” we speak of games in a much broader sense.
Definition: Game
A situation is a “game” whenever (i) more than one person is making a decision and (ii) people’s decisions impact one another.
Just about everything we do in life is a game in the game-theory sense. At home, at school, everywhere we go, and just about everything we do, we are playing games. Do not believe me? Think back to the very beginning of your day, when you woke up. How quickly you got out of bed impacted your parents—and how early they woke you up impacted you—so that was a game! Think about what happened next, throughout the rest of the day. From the bathroom to the breakfast table, in the classroom and on the playground, you make...
