Games People Play: Game Theory in Life, Business, and Beyond

Modern game theory - the scientific study of interactive, rational decision making - achieved prominence in the mid-20th century and has proven instrumental in helping us understand how and why we make decisions. Game theory plays a crucial role in our lives and provides startling insights into all endeavors in which humans cooperate or compete, including biology, computer science, politics, agriculture, and, most importantly, economics. You can see game theory at work in the interactions you engage in every day, such as an obvious "game," like buying a car, or a less obvious one, like trying to decide where to go on a Saturday night or how you ought to dress. Award-winning Professor Scott Stevens introduces you to the tools of game theory by exploring several classic games, each involving two players who can make one of two choices. Translating them into everyday examples, Professor Stevens shows how these games occur everywhere, from casual life to business to international diplomacy. Just as these lessons introduce you to game theory's most important ideas, they also introduce you to many of its most important minds, like von Neumann, Nash, Arrow, Nalebuff, and Brandenberger. While game theory is rooted in mathematics, this course requires nothing more than a basic understanding of how numbers operate and interact. Each lesson features visually rich graphics that help you grasp the simple mathematical ideas underlying this fascinating field of study. Despite the apparent complexity of game theory, Professor Stevens always makes the subject matter accessible and easy to understand. Taught with relish and wit by a teacher as amiable and easy to understand as he is knowledgeable, Games People Play instills a new awareness of the games 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.