Ever since modern game theory-the scientific study of interactive, rational decision making-achieved prominence in the mid-20th century, it 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.
For example, game theory has become an invaluable tool for economists, underpinning the theories of five Nobel Prize winners in economics;
helps corporate decision makers through the alternatives of complex negotiations where thousands of jobs and billions of dollars may be at stake;
plays a crucial role in international diplomacy and military strategy, influencing the fates of nations even when that influence may well be invisible to the uninitiated; and
provides insights into the origins of human behaviors, not only for psychologists seeking to understand why we act as we do, but also for evolutionary biologists asking how those patterns of actions-as human strategies-were handed down.
You can even 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.
A basic working knowledge of this profoundly important tool can help us cut through an often confusing clutter of information-allowing us to make better decisions in our own lives or better understand the decisions facing other players in games. In Games People Play: Game Theory in Life, Business, and Beyond, award-winning Professor Scott P. Stevens of James Madison University has designed a course meant for anyone looking to gain that knowledge. In 24 insightful lectures, he presents you with the fundamentals of game theory in a manner that is both engaging and easy to understand.
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22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great Topic, Limited Course,
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This review is from: Games People Play: Game Theory in Life, Business and Beyond DVD Teaching Company Great Courses (The Great Courses Business & Economics, 1 & 2) (DVD-ROM)
Game theory is somewhat esoteric, but it's very interesting, has important applications, and is become increasingly well known, so I commend TTC for offering a course on this topic. In fact, I had started looking into game theory for two potential applications (cancer modeling and infrastructure security) a while back, so I was really excited when this course came out.
The course is an introductory survey course which aims to give a sense of game theory's applications, limitations, types of models, and history. I think the course succeeds in that regard, and I came away from the course with a desire to learn more. But the course does have some problems which lowered my rating to 4 stars, and almost lowered it to 3 stars. The main issue is that the course is somewhat superficial when it comes to the needed math, so we never learn how to build game-theoretic models for practical applications, nor are we exposed to the type of math that would be involved in doing that. This is despite the course having quite a bit of technical concepts and terminology. The other main problem is that Stevens goes through many examples, often in numerical detail, with little or no accompanying on-screen graphics. He's a very capable and personable lecturer, but this lack of graphics is simply lazy and unacceptable. If this course was presented in a university classroom, all the steps and numbers would be shown on the blackboard, whereas this course demands that we rely on Stevens' words alone, which is asking too much of the audience (especially if you watch TTC videos while on the treadmill, like me). The solution is perhaps to lengthen the course to 48 lectures, raise the mathematical sophistication of the course, and work through all examples in detail with appropriate accompanying graphics. Including practice problems (with solutions) in the course booklet would also be a big help. As the course stands now, I can still recommend it, especially for people already interested in game theory or who at least like analytical subjects. But people need to be aware of the limitations of the course, which require going well beyond this course if one really wants to learn this subject (eg, by reading books on game theory).
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