Lectures on the Theory of Games (AM-37)

Rating:
Summary: Be there when the field of game theory was born
Review: Princeton University Press is doing the mathematical world a favor by publishing their annals of mathematics series. It is designed to make available to all some of the seminal papers and lectures in many areas of mathematics. This book contains a republication of the lectures in the introductory theory of games that Harold Kuhn presented to a group of upper level undergraduate and graduate students in 1952. For these reasons, reading them will not only teach you the basic theory of games, but also give you some of the historical perspective on how the theory arose. The level of presentation is just right, and Kuhn does not have the ensuing fifty years of game theory analysis to fall back on in his explanations, so he is very clear in his statements.
The topics are the standard ones for introductory game theory: the representation of a game as a matrix, computation of optimal strategies by employing matrix operations, algorithms used in the analysis of games, strategies for infinite games with decision trees and games with perfect information. None of it was new to me, but it still held my attention, which is a high compliment.
Time has not dimmed the light on these lectures, and this is a book that can still be used in basic game theory classes.

Published in the recreational mathematics e-mail newsletter, reprinted with permission.