Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Uncertainty and decision-making
- 2 The concept of probability
- 3 Probability distributions, expectation and prevision
- 4 The concept of utility
- 5 Games and optimization
- 6 Entropy
- 7 Characteristic functions, transformed and limiting distributions
- 8 Exchangeability and inference
- 9 Extremes
- 10 Risk, safety and reliability
- 11 Data and simulation
- 12 Conclusion
- Appendix 1 Common probability distributions
- Appendix 2 Mathematical aspects
- Appendix 3 Answers and comments on exercises
- References
- Index
5 - Games and optimization
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Uncertainty and decision-making
- 2 The concept of probability
- 3 Probability distributions, expectation and prevision
- 4 The concept of utility
- 5 Games and optimization
- 6 Entropy
- 7 Characteristic functions, transformed and limiting distributions
- 8 Exchangeability and inference
- 9 Extremes
- 10 Risk, safety and reliability
- 11 Data and simulation
- 12 Conclusion
- Appendix 1 Common probability distributions
- Appendix 2 Mathematical aspects
- Appendix 3 Answers and comments on exercises
- References
- Index
Summary
Intelligence and war are games, perhaps the only meaningful games left.
William BurroughsWe are survival machines – robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes.
Richard DawkinsA great truth is a truth whose opposite is also a great truth.
Thomas MannConflict
Up to now, we have considered decision-making in cases where we are the ‘protagonist’, and where the ‘antagonist’ is relatively benign, or more precisely, indifferent to our desires. In this case, we characterize the antagonist as ‘nature’ in which we have we considered nature to consist of those aspects such as weather that do not react to our everyday behaviour. We can then regard the activity of engineering design as a ‘game against nature’. In the example of design of an offshore structure to resist wave loading, we might choose the design wave height and ‘nature’ chooses the actual wave heights which the structure has to resist.
But nature includes creatures other than ourselves! In activities in which other human beings – or indeed, animals – are involved, we cannot rely on any kind of indifference. If we set up a business, our competitors are out to do better than us, and this implies trying to take business from us. Strategies will be worked out to achieve this objective. We can no longer rely on probabilistic estimates of our opponent's strategies based on a study of ‘impartial’ nature, as we might do in studying a record of wave heights.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Decisions under UncertaintyProbabilistic Analysis for Engineering Decisions, pp. 220 - 271Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005