A Brief Introduction to the Basics of Game Theory

Game theory is a set of mathematical tools that are used to represent and study social interactions. This is a very brief (and not comprehensive) introduction to some of the basic ideas of game theory. In many ways, game theory is an extension of decision theory which is the study of rational choice when we are faced with uncertainty. For this reason, some of the basic concepts from decision theory (e.g. probability and utility) are important for understanding the basics of game theory. The first section covers some central ideas from decision theory and the discussion of game theory begins in section two.