Game Theory for Biologists

1 Credit · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Game theory was pioneered by mathematicians and economists in the 1940s and 1950s to study the strategic aspects of interactive decision making. At an abstract level, game theory studies settings in which the optimal action for an agent depends on which actions are taken by other agents. In the 1970s, prominent biologists such as John Maynard Smith, George Price, Robert Trivers, and Amotz Zahavi, began to integrate game theory with concepts from biology, which led (and continues to lead) to fruitful insights about biological phenomena. Today, game theory is an important tool in the toolkit of the theoretical biologist. This course provides a first introduction to game theory, with a focus on biological applications. We’ll discuss reciprocal altruism in the context of repeated games, the Handicap Principle in the context of signaling games, social norms as correlated equilibria, and how our understanding of game theory is enhanced by an evolutionary perspective.