Hello. Did you ever see the film A Beautiful Mind, starring Russell Crowe? It's based on the life of an American mathematician and economist, John Nash. The conclusion of the film is set in Stockholm, where Nash is awarded the 1994 Nobel Prize in economics for his revolutionary work on a topic known as game theory. So what is game theory, and why is it relevant for students studying engineering? One of the things that we like to say about a university education is that we don't simply teach knowledge, but we assist students in developing new ways of thinking, and this includes problem-solving skills. Rather than simply teaching the answers to particular problems, we acknowledge that many problems are unique, and there may be many possible solutions, all of which may involve a variety of compromises. The real skill, then, is being able to look at a problem in a way that helps us to systematically consider possible courses of action, and the likelihoods of various outcomes that may follow a particular course of action. Many of the decisions we make and the outcomes that follow are influenced by the behaviour of other people. What will they do? How will they respond to a particular scenario? How will that influence, then, the next person, and the next? We can start to answer these questions, at least in terms of likely and unlikely outcomes, using game theory. Imagine you're responsible for the design of a large building or a sports stadium. You'll need to consider where to place the emergency exits in case of a fire or other types of emergency. To do that, you'll need to consider how people might react under various emergency scenarios. Will they all rush to a particular few exits that could lead to a potentially fatal crowd crush? Or is there a better design that better incorporates what knowledge we may have about human behaviour? These questions and others like them have been addressed many times in the scientific literature by applying game theory. In its simplest form, game theory involves treating the problem as a game.

We'll talk about different types or models of games, including games that involve sequential versus simultaneous moves, single play versus iterated or repeated subgames, zero sum versus non-zero sum outcomes, perfect versus imperfect information, cooperative games versus conflict games. Here's a challenge for you. Spend some time before the lecture to find one application of where game theory has been applied to an engineering or environmental problem. You could start with a Google search. Or you could use one of the literature databases available through the UNSW library website, such as Web of Science or Scopus. I'll ask for some feedback from you at the start of the lecture. You won't need to know very much, just the general problem to which game theory was reported to have been applied in order to evaluate solutions. If you can tell me where it was published, all the better. See you in class.