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This book is an introduction to mathematical game theory, which might better be called the mathematical theory of conflict and cooperation. It is applicable whenever two individuals—or companies, or political parties, or nations—confront situations where the outcome for each depends on the behavior of all. What are the best strategies in such situations? If there are chances of cooperation, with whom should you cooperate, and how should you share the proceeds of cooperation? Since its creation by John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern in 1944, game theory has shed new light on business, politics, economics, social psychology, philosophy, and evolutionary biology. In this book, its fundamental ideas are developed with mathematics at the level of high school algebra and applied to many of these fields (see the table of contents). Ideas like “fairness” are presented via axioms that fair allocations should satisfy; thus the reader is introduced to axiomatic thinking as well as to mathematical modeling of actual situations.
Topology is a branch of mathematics packed with intriguing concepts, fascinating geometrical objects, and ingenious methods for studying them. The authors have written this textbook to make the material accessible to undergraduate students without requiring extensive prerequisites in upper-level mathematics. The approach is to cultivate the intuitive ideas of continuity, convergence, and connectedness so students can quickly delve into knot theory, the topology of surfaces and three-dimensional manifolds, fixed points and elementary homotopy theory. The fundamental concepts of point-set topology appear at the end of the book when students can see how this level of abstraction provides a sound logical basis for the geometrical ideas that have come before. This organization exposes students to the exciting world of topology now(!) rather than later. Students using this textbook should have some exposure to the geometry of objects in higher-dimensional Euclidean spaces together with an appreciation of precise mathematical definitions and proofs.
"Deals with real life situations where objectives of the participants are partially cooperative and partially conflicting"--
Voters today often desert a preferred candidate for a more viable second choice to avoid wasting their vote. Likewise, parties to a dispute often find themselves unable to agree on a fair division of contested goods. In Mathematics and Democracy, Steven Brams, a leading authority in the use of mathematics to design decision-making processes, shows how social-choice and game theory could make political and social institutions more democratic. Using mathematical analysis, he develops rigorous new procedures that enable voters to better express themselves and that allow disputants to divide goods more fairly. One of the procedures that Brams proposes is "approval voting," which allows voters to vote for as many candidates as they like or consider acceptable. There is no ranking, and the candidate with the most votes wins. The voter no longer has to consider whether a vote for a preferred but less popular candidate might be wasted. In the same vein, Brams puts forward new, more equitable procedures for resolving disputes over divisible and indivisible goods.
A Bridge to Abstract Mathematics will prepare the mathematical novice to explore the universe of abstract mathematics. Mathematics is a science that concerns theorems that must be proved within the constraints of a logical system of axioms and definitions rather than theories that must be tested, revised, and retested. Readers will learn how to read mathematics beyond popular computational calculus courses. Moreover, readers will learn how to construct their own proofs. The book is intended as the primary text for an introductory course in proving theorems, as well as for self-study or as a reference. Throughout the text, some pieces (usually proofs) are left as exercises. Part V gives hints...
The contents of this volume are drawn from the seventh International Symposium in Economic Theory and Econometrics, and represent recent advances in the development of concepts and methods in political economy. Contributors include leading practitioners working on formal, applied, and historical approaches to the subject. The collection will interest scholars in the fields of political science and political sociology no less than economics. Part I outlines relevant concepts in political economy, including implementation, community, ideology, and institutions. Part II covers theory and applications of the spatial model of voting. Part III considers the different characteristics that govern the behaviour of institutions, while Part IV analyses competition between political representatives. Part V is concerned with the way in which government acquires information held by voters or advisors, and Part VI addresses government choice on monetary policy and taxation.
This book offers a self-sufficient treatment of a key tool, game theory and mechanism design, to model, analyze, and solve centralized as well as decentralized design problems involving multiple autonomous agents that interact strategically in a rational and intelligent way. The contents of the book provide a sound foundation of game theory and mechanism design theory which clearly represent the “science” behind traditional as well as emerging economic applications for the society.The importance of the discipline of game theory has been recognized through numerous Nobel prizes in economic sciences being awarded to game theorists, including the 2005, 2007, and 2012 prizes. The book distil...
Explaining conspicuous consumption in international relations -- Status symbols and luxury goods in international relations -- The aircraft carrier club -- A contest of beneficence: prosociality in international relations -- Big science and the transits of Venus: the first race to space -- Conclusions: living in a Veblenian world
Teaching Statistics Using Baseball is a collection of case studies and exercises applying statistical and probabilistic thinking to the game of baseball. Baseball is the most statistical of all sports since players are identified and evaluated by their corresponding hitting and pitching statistics. There is an active effort by people in the baseball community to learn more about baseball performance and strategy by the use of statistics. This book illustrates basic methods of data analysis and probability models by means of baseball statistics collected on players and teams. Students often have difficulty learning statistics ideas since they are explained using examples that are foreign to t...
Covering a span of almost 4000 years, from the ancient Babylonians to the eighteenth century, this collection chronicles the enormous changes in mathematical thinking over this time as viewed by distinguished historians of mathematics from the past and the present. Each of the four sections of the book (Ancient Mathematics, Medieval and Renaissance Mathematics, The Seventeenth Century, The Eighteenth Century) is preceded by a Foreword, in which the articles are put into historical context, and followed by an Afterword, in which they are reviewed in the light of current historical scholarship. In more than one case, two articles on the same topic are included to show how knowledge and views about the topic changed over the years. This book will be enjoyed by anyone interested in mathematics and its history - and, in particular, by mathematics teachers at secondary, college, and university levels.