A – Z of Game Theory
A – Auctions – There are four main types of auction
B – Battle of the Sexes – a co-operation game
C – Chicken – fight or flight – are you a chicken?
D – Dictator – a game looking a human behaviours
E – Evolution – evolutionary game theory is a major branch of the subject
F – Forms – normal & extensive – different ways to represent games
G – Global warming – often cited as an example of the tragedy of the commons game
H – Hunt (Stag) – a game studying co-operation
I – Information (perfect, non-perfect) – depends on how much the players can see of each others moves
J – John Nash – made famous by A Beautiful Mind
K – Kuhn poker – a simplified version of poker to make it easier to analyse
L – Large Poisson game – a game with a random number of players
M – Oskar Morgenstern – one of the founders of game theory
N – Nash equilibrium – Named after John Nash, the position in a game where each player has nothing to gain from changing their strategy
O – Overfishing – another example of the tragedy of the commons
P – Prisoners Dilemma – the first game that introduces everyone to game theory
Q – Quantum game theory
R – Rock, Paper, Scissors – simple game which introduces mixed strategies
S – Schelling point – also known as a focal point. A natural strategy that people will tend to choose
T – Traveller’s dilemma – what might happen if you lost your luggage
U – Ultimatum – a game where people turn down free money if the offer isn’t ‘fair’
V – Voting – there is a lot of game theory analysis of voting patterns and behaviors
W – Weakly dominant strategy – a strategy that is always at least as good as any other strategy, whatever strategy the other player chooses.
X – MiXed strategy - the optimum strategy in a game is often to mix up the possible strategies
Y – You can comment if you can think of a ‘Y’!
Z – Zero sum game – a game where one player’s gain is matched by another player’s loss
