MATH 335
Decisions, Games, and Evolutionary Dynamics
Last Offered Fall 2021
Division III Quantitative/Formal Reasoning
This course is not offered in the current catalog

Given goals, options, and uncertainty, how does one make a rational choice? What happens when we interact with others who are also choosing? How might this play out over time? We will first cover the principles of of decision theory including preference, uncertainty, utility, imperfect information, and rational choice. The majority of the course will be spent on the main topics of game theory: sequential games, bimatrix games, parlor games, Nash equilibria, bargaining, repeated games, Bayesian belief, and signaling. Applying these principles to populations that evolve over time through variation, selection, and copying, we will develop basic models of the dynamics of evolution.