Colloquium - The Mathematics of Games

Speaker:  Katherine Staden (The Open University)

Abstract:  Game theory is the study of situations of conflict and cooperation. It's a field which straddles the boundaries of mathematics and economics (to date, fifteen game theorists have won the Nobel Prize in Economics), and has many applications ranging from voting theory to evolutionary biology. In this talk I will introduce the main concepts, in particular Nash equilibrium, and will explain how to prove Nash's theorem on equilibria which is the central theorem of game theory. The proof, perhaps surprisingly, will take us on a tour of several areas of pure mathematics.

Game theory is a new topic to OU mathematics which will feature in the upcoming module MST368 Graphs, games and designs.