A Field Theory of Games Introduction to Decision Process Engineering, Volume 1

For decades, the study of strategic interactions between rational decision makers has formed the basis of game theory. In this two-volume series, Professor Gerald H. Thomas, instructor of a successful engineering course, extends game theory concepts to focus on dynamic games, introducing students to a new take on game theory referred to as the field theory of games. Thomas prioritizes conceptual understanding over mathematical equation solving, making the text accessible to not only engineering students but also to a more general audience, including business students.

By using a toolkit based on the Wolfram Language, readers can bypass the need to solve linear programming problems and partial differential equations by hand, allowing them to arrive at solutions with practical applications more efficiently. Though this book begins with classical game theory, it differs from the usual approaches to dynamic games and deals with incomplete information by using constraints in a geometric theory, where the shortest path provides a deterministic prediction of future behaviors. In Volume 1, students will learn to apply introductory ideas to a system without constraints. The next installment of the series, Volume 2, will explore the consequences of adding constraints and provide an application guide.

Information and Media Inquiries

November 22, 2021 Publication
Publicity and Interviews: publishing@wolfram.com
Trim Size: 7" x 10"
Non-Fiction

Distribution by Amazon

Contents

• Preface
• Game Theory
• Cultural Decision Models
• Non-Zero-Sum Games, Flows, and Sources
• Ownership Constraints
• Ownership Flows
• Conserved Owner Streams
• Networks
• Utility Metric Gradients
• Inertial Flows
• Appendix A
• References

About the Author

Gerald H. Thomas has 10 years of experience in high-energy particle physics at CERN in Switzerland and Finland, as well as at Argonne National Laboratory, USA, followed by 25 years in the corporate world at both AT&T Bell Labs and Motorola (cellular division), and at a successful start-up company in Florida, USA. The corporate experiences included project management, software engineering, and senior and executive management. More recently, the author has been an adjunct professor at the Milwaukee School of Engineering for the past 18 years. He has also published several books. Of relevance to these, the author worked closely with system dynamics consultants trained at MIT to help control the delivery and staffing overruns for a large software project. This generated the idea that a deterministic theory of decisions could be created that would apply not only to software projects but more generally to any field of human endeavor in which decisions play a significant role. The key was to tie this idea to a theoretical foundation, which his experience in particle physics provided. This resulted in a two-volume set titled Geometry, Language and Strategy. A second two-volume set along the same lines has been published by Wolfram Media, entitled A Field Theory of Games: Introduction to Decision Process Engineering. This set provides important refinements to the theory, an introduction to the Wolfram Language, and a toolkit that allows readers to apply the theory to practical problems.

Other books by Gerald H. Thomas

• A Field Theory of Games: Introduction to Decision Process Engineering, Volume 2