Some examples of applications of Game Theory

Question

I'm approaching my junior year of HS now, and I'm looking for a good science fair project to do. I love mathematics, so I decided to a category of mathematics that can help base logical conclusions to real-life events. That's when I came upon the topics of game theory.

I was very interested in the subject, so I decided to read more about it (started looking here).

After reading more about it, I knew that I really wanted to a project on game theory. However, because I've quite new to it, I don't know any good applications that can be solved using game theory. Does anyone know of any? I don't mind the difficulty of the project, I just want to find something to do using my knowledge of game theory that I've read so far.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

I find one of the very interesting applications is in nature itself, how living things naturally find optimal strategies in their interactions. For instance some occurences of the game "rock-paper-scissors" can be found in nature. The wikipedia page on Evolutionary Game Theory already contains nice material.

The "most classical" application of game theory is economics, but in my opinion it is a slippery slope, because of the political and ideological implications it can lead to. So my advice would be to avoid it, both for staying away of ideological fights and for the sake of originality !

It is also interesting to note that games play important roles in the most unexpected areas of mathematics: set theory, computer science, topology,... For instance the issue of determinacy in two-player games (does one of the player have a winning strategy ?) is very rich and could be the theme of a full project by itself.

Answer 2

You have practical applications in economics, insurance (how to price a policy to screen for bad drivers) and finance (how to structure deals with the right incentives), natural sciences... (among others)

Answer 3

Richard Dawkins speaks about Evolutionarily Stable Strategies in his book The Selfish Gene. The example of the hawk x dove strategies is really nice, but there are others. Hawk strategy (in any species) is agressive, it always fight; dove strategy (in the same species) is coward, it always flee. He shows how none of those strategies survive alone, and an equilibrium is reached. I just don't know how you can turn this into a science project (perhaps a computer simulation).

Answer 4

My Answer follow by question: "whether, when and how the fight against the scourge called cyber crime and corruption, its contribution can provide game theory methods and, generally, techniques of operations research and Invention of operational researchers? ".

Answer 5

I am also an entering junior in HS, and I was looking for a similar project a couple months back.I decided on making and AI to play the game theory gunner game.

The AI learns over time by recording the results of previous games, and changes it's strategy accordingly.

This concept is simple, and also very similar to how life adapts(as commented upon by Denis). I find this to be a very elegant concept, as it can be seen in almost all natural systems.

I thing doing something like this would make an excellent project, as you could decided to apply this concept to so many different areas.

Good luck with your project.