My introduction to game theory
I just finished reading the book “An introduction to Game Theory” by Martin J. Osborne. A truly wonderful book, which seems to have influenced even my everyday thinking. Its only problem, for me, is that it tries too hard not to make it necessary, for its reader, to use even elementary algebra.
Its beauty, however, lies mainly in the carefully chosen exercises. At the beginning of the book, they seem so elementary that they make you wonder, and even bore you to solve them. But they unfold, from the middle of the book onwards, in a surprisingly beautiful and inventive way.
The exercises in the book, after all, are all worth solving one by one. However, reading the book would become too laborious, if one were to try to solve them by hand. Fortunately for me, I had the idea to develop an elementary algorithm for finding the Nash equilibria so that, the basic parts of the exercises could be solved by computer. The development of the algorithm can be found here. Using pure_Nash.wxm is much faster but does not allow for unknown variables, so it was of little help. Mostly I used the slower mixed_Nash.wxm, but it does allow for unknown variables and contains the solutions of pure_Nash.wxm anyway.
This way, and reading the book I managed to finish and enjoyed it.
I wish the same for anyone who decides to read the same book.