Chance, Strategy, and Choice: An Introduction to the Mathematics of Games and Elections

ISBN-13: 9781107084520 / Angielski / Twarda / 2015 / 352 str.

Samuel Bruce Smith; Sam Smith

Opis

Games and elections are fundamental activities in society with applications in economics, political science, and sociology. These topics offer familiar, current, and lively subjects for a course in mathematics. This classroom-tested textbook, primarily intended for a general education course in game theory at the freshman or sophomore level, provides an elementary treatment of games and elections. Starting with basics such as gambling, zero-sum and combinatorial games, Nash equilibria, social dilemmas, and fairness and impossibility theorems for elections, the text then goes further into the theory with accessible proofs of advanced topics such as the Sprague-Grundy theorem and Arrow's impossibility theorem. * Uses an integrative approach to probability, game, and social choice theory * Provides a gentle introduction to the logic of mathematical proof, thus equipping readers with the necessary tools for further mathematical studies * Contains numerous exercises and examples of varying levels of difficulty * Requires only a high school mathematical background.

Recenzje

'Chance, Strategy, and Choice fits an important niche for general audience textbooks about games, elections, and other introductory material related to social choice theory … One of my favorite features of the book is that it does an excellent job of integrating the topics of games and elections to illustrate the interconnections between the different areas of social choice theory, often through illustrative examples.' Adam Graham-Squire, MAA Reviews

Spis treści

1. Introduction; 2. Games and elections; 3. Chance; 4. Strategy; 5. Choice; 6. Strategy and choice; 7. Choice and chance; 8. Chance and strategy; 9. Nash equilibria; 10. Proofs and counterexamples; 11. Laws of probability; 12. Fairness in elections; 13. Weighted voting; 14. Gambling games; 15. Zero-sum games; 16. Partial conflict games; 17. Take-away games; 18. Fairness and impossibility; 19. Paradoxes and puzzles in probability; 20. Combinatorial games; 21. Borda versus Condorcet; 22. The Sprague–Grundy theorem; 23. Arrow's impossibility theorem.