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Game Theory: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)
Product Description Games are everywhere: Drivers maneuvering in heavy traffic are playing a driving game. Bargain hunters bidding on eBay are playing an auctioning game. The supermarket's price for corn flakes is decided by playing an economic game. This Very Short Introduction offers a succinct tour of the fascinating world of game theory, a ground-breaking field that analyzes how to play games in a rational way. Ken Binmore, a renowned game theorist, explains the theory in a way that is both entertaining and non-mathematical yet also deeply insightful, revealing how game theory can shed light on everything from social gatherings, to ethical decision-making, to successful card-playing strategies, to calculating the sex ratio among bees. With mini-biographies of many fascinating, and occasionally eccentric, founders of the subject--including John Nash, subject of the movie A gorgeous Mind--this book offers a concise overview of a cutting-edge field that has seen spectacular successes in evolutionary biology and economics, and is beginning to revolutionize other disciplines from psychology to political science. About The Author Ken Binmore is Emeritus Professor of Economics at University College, London. He has held Chairs in Economics at the London School of Economics and the University of Michigan. Reader Reviews I avoid writing negative reviews, but am willing to do so when there is a need to warn other readers about wasting time and money on a book. This book presents one such occassion. The problem is simply that this book works very poorly as an introduction. The early parts of the book fail to provide the lay of the land, definitions of terms are unclear, many topics are poorly explained, and all sorts of necessary details are missing. I see that another reviewer loved the book, but I also get the impression that this reviewer already has some background in game theory (which I don't). Readers with that background might find this book to be a fun and breezy review since they can fill in the missing content but, again, the problem is that this book purports to be an introduction. Lest anyone think that the real problem was that this book was over my head, I'll just note that I'm an engineer, and I've done fine with plenty of books dealing with math, science, and other analytic subjects, many of which are a good bit more advanced than Binmore's. I had to cut my losses and abandon this book about a third of the way through, and I'll now be looking again for a game theory book which is genuinely a proper introduction. After reading such a book, perhaps I'll come back to Binmore's book and see if I can get more out of it. Comment | | (Report this)
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