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Product Description
Millions have seen the movie and thousands have read the book but few have fully appreciated the mathematics developed by John Nash's beautiful mind. Today Nash's beautiful math has become a universal language for research in the social sciences and has infiltrated the realms of evolutionary biology, neuroscience, and even quantum physics. John Nash won the 1994 Nobel Prize in economics for pioneering research published in the 1950's on a new branch of mathematics known as game theory. At the time of Nash's early work, game theory was briefly popular among some mathematicians and Cold War analysts. But it remained obscure until the 1970's when evolutionary biologists began applying it to their work. In the 1980's economists began to embrace game theory. Since then it has found an ever expanding repertoire of applications among a wide range of scientific disciplines.Today neuroscientists peer into game players brains, anthropologists play games with people from primitive cultures, biologists use games to explain the evolution of human language, and mathematicians exploit games to better understand social networks. A common thread connecting much of this research is its relevance to the ancient quest for a science of human social behaviour, or a Code of Nature, in the spirit of the fictional science of psychohistory described in the famous Foundation novels by the late Isaac Asimov. In "A Beautiful Math", acclaimed science writer Tom Siegfried describes how game theory links the life sciences, social sciences, and physical sciences in a way that may bring Asimov's dream closer to reality.
About the Author
Tom Siegfried
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9 reviews
15 of 17 people found the following review helpful
for the beginner and rather misleading
20 Jun 2007
Format:Hardcover
This is a 215 page book. If you are familiar with the Prisoner's Dilemma there just isn't a whole lot here for you. The discussion of statistical mechanics pales in comparison (and is rather similar to the outline of) Philip Ball's vastly superior "Critical Mass". Go there first. I know that is a different subject but a good chunk of this book discusses it. The author creates a ridiculous and unrealistic strawman of evolutionary pyschology and then repeatedly belittles it because human societies are variable (what a novel and unexpected concept!). Usuaully the author presents one example of work within each field he discusses - I suppose this keeps it readable but disappointing light fare. Go read "Critical Mass", don't waste your time with this.
18 of 21 people found the following review helpful
Journalistic hypes and some patently false claims
3 Aug 2007
Format:Hardcover
I am an academic economist who knows something about game theory, so when I bought this book I did not hope to learn anything new but just to be entertained by an "illuminating" author during my leisure hours. I was disappointed to the point of anger.
This book is basically a journalist's report based on interviews with a few (probably half a dozen) individuals as the pages are filled with quotes from several academics in good standing. I think it would have been better to simply present many illuminating quotes from these individuals without inserting additional insights that the author gleaned from them, because many of the author's insertions were at best misleading and at worst patently false.
Just for an example, the author keeps insisting that payoff numbers in games are "money" as economists are interested in monetary matters. It might probably be true that von Neumann preferred interpreting payoffs of a game as money, but most practicing economists and game theorists certaintly do not do that.
An annoying repeated phrase is that "xxx told me (in an exclusive interview) that..." where xxx is one of the half dozen individuals mentioned above. Most of what xxx told the author must be correct, relevant and have some meaning but these are simply taken out of context by bits and spread throughout the text.
Also the basic hype about game theory's possibility to be a Theory of Everything seems to come out of (as the author admits) one person's recent writings at Bell Labs. The idea itself presented as such sounds simply outrageous (even to an academic economist like myself) but rather a surpring fact is that game theory's origins are in fact related to such an outrageous idea from physicists, mathematicians and "cyberneticians", one story of which is told in Mirowski, Machine Dreams. Mirowski's book has its own faults, and is a lot more heavy going (with some 500 + pages with small fonts and requiring a lot of knowledge), but at least it shows seriousness and a lot of research the author took to it.
This book is basically a journalist's report based on interviews with a few (probably half a dozen) individuals as the pages are filled with quotes from several academics in good standing. I think it would have been better to simply present many illuminating quotes from these individuals without inserting additional insights that the author gleaned from them, because many of the author's insertions were at best misleading and at worst patently false.
Just for an example, the author keeps insisting that payoff numbers in games are "money" as economists are interested in monetary matters. It might probably be true that von Neumann preferred interpreting payoffs of a game as money, but most practicing economists and game theorists certaintly do not do that.
An annoying repeated phrase is that "xxx told me (in an exclusive interview) that..." where xxx is one of the half dozen individuals mentioned above. Most of what xxx told the author must be correct, relevant and have some meaning but these are simply taken out of context by bits and spread throughout the text.
Also the basic hype about game theory's possibility to be a Theory of Everything seems to come out of (as the author admits) one person's recent writings at Bell Labs. The idea itself presented as such sounds simply outrageous (even to an academic economist like myself) but rather a surpring fact is that game theory's origins are in fact related to such an outrageous idea from physicists, mathematicians and "cyberneticians", one story of which is told in Mirowski, Machine Dreams. Mirowski's book has its own faults, and is a lot more heavy going (with some 500 + pages with small fonts and requiring a lot of knowledge), but at least it shows seriousness and a lot of research the author took to it.
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
I think I get it know
13 Mar 2007
Format:Hardcover
I first picked up this book because I thought it would be more of a biography of John Nash. The book is more a discussion of how game theory can be used to help understand nature.
The book was very readable and even gave me a historic perspective about where this trend is going. Although there is some very limited math in the book, it is very clearly explained. The books is very readable and engaging.
After reading this book, I know want to know more about game theory and its predictive capabilities. I would highly recommend this book.
The book was very readable and even gave me a historic perspective about where this trend is going. Although there is some very limited math in the book, it is very clearly explained. The books is very readable and engaging.
After reading this book, I know want to know more about game theory and its predictive capabilities. I would highly recommend this book.
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