Game Theory: Decisions, Interaction and Evolution

This book is an introduction to game theory from a mathematical perspective. It is intended to be a ?rst course for undergraduate students of mathematics, but I also hope that it will contain something of interest to advanced students or researchers in biology and economics who often encounter the basics of game theory informally via relevant applications. In view of the intended audience, the examples used in this book are generally abstract problems so that the reader is not forced to learn a great deal of a subject – either biology or e- nomics – that may be unfamiliar. Where a context is given, these are usually “classical” problems of the subject area and are, I hope, easy enough to follow. The prerequisites are generally modest. Apart from a familiarity with (or a willingness to learn) the concepts of a proof and some mathematical no- tion, the main requirement is an elementary understanding of probability. A familiarity with basic calculus would be useful for Chapter 6 and some parts of Chapters 1 and 8. The basic ideas of simple ordinary di?erential equations are required in Chapter 9 and, towards the end of that chapter, some familiarity with matrices would be an advantage – although the relevant ideas are brie?y described in an appendix.