Wolfram Library Archive


Courseware Demos MathSource Technical Notes
All Collections Articles Books Conference Proceedings
Title

A Field Theory of Games: Introduction to Decision Process Engineering, Volume 1
Author

Gerald H. Thomas
Book information

Publisher: Wolfram Media, Inc. (Champaign, IL)
Copyright year: 2021
ISBN: 9781579550479
Medium: ebook
Pages: 384
Out of print?: N
Buy this book
Book cover image
Contents

Preface
Game Theory
Cultural Decision Models
Non-Zero-Sum Games, Flows, and Sources
Ownership Constraints
Ownership Flows
Conserved Owner Streams
Networks
Utility Metric Gradients
Inertial Flows
Appendix A
References
Description

For decades, the study of strategic interactions between rational decision makers has formed the basis of game theory. In this two-volume series, Professor Gerald H. Thomas, instructor of a successful engineering course, extends game theory concepts to focus on dynamic games, introducing students to a new take on game theory referred to as the field theory of games. Thomas prioritizes conceptual understanding over mathematical equation solving, making the text accessible to not only engineering students but also to a more general audience, including business students.

By using a toolkit based on the Wolfram Language, readers can bypass the need to solve linear programming problems and partial differential equations by hand, allowing them to arrive at solutions with practical applications more efficiently. Though this book begins with classical game theory, it differs from the usual approaches to dynamic games and deals with incomplete information by using constraints in a geometric theory, where the shortest path provides a deterministic prediction of future behaviors. In Volume 1, students will learn to apply introductory ideas to a system without constraints. The next installment of the series, Volume 2, will explore the consequences of adding constraints and provide an application guide.
Subject

*Applied Mathematics > Game Theory
Keywords

game theory, dynamic games, decision process, statistical decision, management science, mathematics, computer software