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Games People Play: Game Theory in Life, Business, and Beyond

Series: Games People Play: Game Theory in Life, Business, and Beyond

4.3

(7)

Episodes

Rating

Year

2008

Language

English

Publisher

The Great Courses

About

In Games People Play: Game Theory in Life, Business, and Beyond, you explore the fundamentals of game theory in an engaging, comprehensible manner. You investigate the field's classic games, encounter its greatest minds, and discover its real world applications in arenas including corporate negotiations, foreign policy-and your everyday life.

Related Subjects

Episodes

1. The World of Game Theory

33m

"Games" apply to all aspects of life. You're introduced to the subject with a perplexing dilemma, a brief history of the field, and some of its applications, and the three fundamental components of any game: players, strategies, and payoffs.

2. The Nature of the Game

30m

You gain a deeper insight into the essential building blocks of players, strategies, and payoffs-most of them more complex and subtle than they might appear-along with two new concepts, rationality and common sense.

2. Senet: Egypt's Game of the Afterlife

32m

The 5,000 artifacts discovered in the tomb of Egyptian King Tutankhamun included magnificent gold statues, iron blades, and four boards for the game senet-a game played by royalty and commoners alike during the entire 3,000-year lifespan of the Egyptian civilization. Discover what historians have learned from the game boards' hieroglyphs and why senet disappeared so abruptly.

3. Chess: The Evolution of a Strategy Icon

33m

In the waning years of the Indian Gupta Empire, 6th century CE, a board game was developed called chaturanga. This game of tabletop warfare starred the soldiers, elephants, horse riders, and chariots that had helped the Gupta rajas create their kingdom. Discover how this ancient game of strategy wound its way westward to eventually become the enduringly popular game we know as chess.

3. The Real Life Chessboard-Sequential Games

31m

In seeking the optimal strategies for games in which players take turns and where the full history of the game is known to all, you learn how to construct a "game tree" and are introduced to one of game theory's key concepts: the Nash equilibrium.

4. Life's Little Games-The 2 x 2 Classic Games

31m

You examine four classic two-player games, with each player considering his or her own two choices. Simple though they may be, these games appear at the heart of larger, more complicated games and provide important insights into dealing effectively with others.

4. Chess's Eastern Cousins: Shogi and Xiangqi

34m

While the westward development of chaturanga into chess is fairly well documented, its eastward route is somewhat murky. Explore a Chinese game called xiangqi, and a Japanese game called shogi. Are these two games of tabletop warfare closer to each other in play than they are to chess? Or do they both have a definite lineage from chaturanga?

5. Guessing Right-Simultaneous Move Games

30m

You learn a general way of representing simultaneous-move games-where players make decisions without knowing those of others-and acquire valuable tools to solve them. Military and business examples are used to introduce the minimax approach, the iterated elimination of dominated strategies, and the best response method.

5. Go: A Game of Near-Infinite Complexity

33m

In much of the world, chess is considered the ultimate strategy game, with an average of 35 possible moves to choose from in any given situation. But in Eastern Asia, that exalted status belongs to go, with its average of 250 possible next moves. Explore the fascinating play of this unique game that is so easy to learn and so very difficult to master.

6. Practical Applications of Game Theory

31m

Applying what you've learned, you see how a stock bid of $98 can beat one of $102; how insisting you lose a competition can be a winning strategy; and why being blackmailed can be in your best interest.

Extended Details

SeriesGames People Play: Game Theory in Life, Business, and Beyond

Closed CaptionsEnglish

Artists

The Great CoursesDirector

The Great CoursesProducer

Scott P. StevensActor