This is a year three module. It is taught intensively by Birmingham academics over eight weeks. There is continuous assessment and a final examination.
This module presents game theory as the study of decision-making in competitive situations. It provides an introduction to the theory of finite games with a particular emphasis on 2-person games. All results will be presented in a rigorous way and accompanied, wherever possible, by showing economic applications.
This module also demonstrates that the results and concepts of other branches of mathematics (like the fixed point theorem, convexity, duality) have practical interpretation and use. The second part of this module aims to introduce the students to the philosophy and context of discrete and continuous simulation applied to manufacturing, management and organisational systems. It will address progressive model building, the dynamics of stochastic systems, verification, validation and experimentation.
By the end of the module students should be able to:
- Understand and use the main concepts of game theory like optimal strategies, stable sets and the core of the game;
- Formulate games from economic narratives and use a range of methods for solving these games;
- Formulate extended mental models of manufacturing, management and organisational systems;
- Articulate such models in terms of entities, activities and events; build, validate and experiment with such models;
- interpret the dynamical behaviour of such models;
- Assess system performance and translate into recommendations for improvement.