This book is about a new and different way of approaching and studying the history of the built environment and the use of historical precedents in design. However, although what I am proposing is new for what is currently called architectural history, both my approach and even my conclusions are not that new in other fields, as I discovered when I attempted to find supporting evidence. * In fact, of all the disciplines dealing with various aspects of the study of the past, architectural history seems to have changed least in the ways I am advocating. There is currently a revival of interest...

This book presents the content of a year's course in decision processes for third and fourth year students given at the University of Toronto. A principal theme of the book is the relationship between normative and descriptive decision theory. The distinction between the two approaches is not clear to everyone, yet it is of great importance. Normative decision theory addresses itself to the question of how people ought to make decisions in various types of situations, if they wish to be regarded (or to regard themselves) as 'rational'. Descriptive decision theory purports to describe how...

This book is about the interplay of theory and experimentation on group decision making in economics. The theories that the book subjects to experimental testing mostly come from the theory of games. The decisions investigated in the book mostly concern economic interaction like strict competition. two-person bargaining. and coalition formation. The underlying philosophy of the articles collected in this book is consistent with the opinion of a growing number of economists and psychologists that economic issues cannot be understood fully just by thinking about them. Rather. the interplay...

This text examines both the normative and the descriptive approaches to decision theory. Special emphasis is laid on "offshoots" of both theories to cognitive psychology, theoretical biology, and philosophy.

The three major aims of the present study were to (a) test some of the major game-theoretic solutions for n-person games in characteristic function form with data obtained from "rational" players; (b) locate, assess, and explain differences between sophisticated and naive subjects in coalition frequencies and payoff disbursements; and (c) provide a common data base for bargaining process analyses and testing of both present and future models. To this end, five quartets of subjects each partici pated in 16 different coalition formation tasks presented as computer-controlled, four-person,...

Game theory could be formally defined as a theory of rational decision in conflict situations. Models of such situations, as they are conceived in game theory, involve (1) a set of decision makers, called players; (2) a set of strategies available to each player; (3) a set of outcomes, each of which is a result of particular choices of strategies made by the players on a given play of the game; and (4) a set of payoffs accorded to each player in each of the possible outcomes. It is assumed that each player is 'individually rational', in the sense that his preference ordering of the outcomes...

The book treats two approaches to decision theory: (1) the normative, purporting to determine how a 'perfectly rational' actor ought to choose among available alternatives; The mathematical tools used in the normative approach range from elementary algebra to matrix and differential equations.