INTRODUCTION
Game theory studies situations involving conflict and cooperation. The three main elements of a game are players, strategies, and payoffs. Games arise when two or more decision makers (players) select from various courses of action (called strategies) which in turn result in likely outcomes (expressed as payoffs). There must be at least two interacting participants with different goals in order to have a game. Game theory makes use of the vocabulary from common parlor games and sports. It is, nevertheless, a serious mathematical subject with a broad spectrum of applications in the social, behavioral, managerial, financial, system, and military sciences.
Game theory differs from classical optimization subjects in that it involves two or more players with different objectives. It also extends the traditional uses of probability and statistics beyond the study of one-person decisions in the realm of statistical uncertainty. This latter case is often referred to as “games of...
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© 2001 Kluwer Academic Publishers
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Lucas, W.F. (2001). Game theory . In: Gass, S.I., Harris, C.M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Operations Research and Management Science. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-0611-X_372
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-0611-X_372
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