Game Theory

In Our Time: Science

BBC

History

4.5 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 10 May 2012

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss game theory, the mathematical study of decision-making. First formulated in the 1940s, the discipline entails devising 'games' to simulate situations of conflict or cooperation. It allows researchers to unravel decision-making strategies, and even to establish why certain types of behaviour emerge. Some of the games studied in game theory have become well known outside academia - they include the Prisoner's Dilemma, an intriguing scenario popularised in novels and films, and which has inspired television game shows. Today game theory is seen as a vital tool in such diverse fields as evolutionary biology, economics, computing and philosophy. With:Ian StewartEmeritus Professor of Mathematics at the University of WarwickAndrew ColmanProfessor of Psychology at the University of LeicesterRichard BradleyProfessor of Philosophy at the London School of Economics and Political Science.Producer: Thomas Morris.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thanks for down learning the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.uk.
0:10.0	I hope you enjoy the program.
0:11.0	Hello, in 1928, 25-year-old Hungarian student gave his first public lecture.
0:17.3	Its title was The Theory of Parley Games and had explored features of basic board games that fascinated the young mathematician.
0:24.8	The student's name was John von Neumann and in the next 15 years he turned these observations
0:29.9	into a new discipline, game theory.
0:32.3	Von Neumann realized that the apparently trivial into a new discipline, game theory.
0:32.6	But Neumann realized that the apparently trivial decisions
0:35.7	made while playing games could be used
0:37.9	to study decision-making more broadly.
0:40.5	Since the early 1950s, theory has flourished it provides a mathematical
0:44.1	description of situations in which individuals have to make choices.
0:48.0	It's been used by economists to study how markets work and also employed by
0:51.9	biologists, political scientists and software designers.
0:55.6	And thanks to film and television, game theory scenarios such as The Prisoner's
0:59.3	dilemma have become familiar outside the realms of academia.
1:03.2	With me to discuss game theory,
1:05.2	Ian Stewart, emeritus professor of mathematics at the University of Warwick.
1:09.2	Andrew Coleman, professor of psychology at the University of Leicester and Richard Bradley
1:14.0	Professor of Philosophy at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
1:18.0	He ensured perhaps you could begin by giving us some idea of why studying games and which games you study is useful in the
1:25.1	first place. We all play games all the time in this sense it's about as you said
	...

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