Game Theory: From Economics to Biology to Computer Science... And Back Again
Peter Lewis, School of Computer Science
Date and time: Thursday 26th November 2009 at 14:00
Location: Room 124, School of Computer Science
In this talk I shall introduce game theory, the theory of strategic interactions between rational individuals, and how the outcomes of these interactions relate to both the individuals’ preferences and the structure of the game. I shall outline a potted history of game theory, including its roots in attempts to reason about economic situations, its formalisation in the early part of the twentieth century, the development of the concept of Nash equilibria in the 1950s, and the theory’s extension as a tool for the analysis of evolutionary and other population based systems, mainly in the 1970s and 1980s. I will describe how computer science has enabled game theory and game theoretic systems to be investigated and applied in new ways, and how in turn this is solving problems in the domains of politics, economics, biology and computer science.