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Surprising applications of the theory of games?

14

I am currently studying the applications of games in quantum information theory and related fields and I am aware of its uses in places like model theory and set theory. So I was curious, what are some other somewhat surprising places(somewhat because I am aware of the subjectivity of the term) where games were/are useful tools?

2 Answers

4

To me, the most surprising has been it's application to numerical solutions of PDEs, see here: Owhadi, Houman, and Clint Scovel. Operator-Adapted Wavelets, Fast Solvers, and Numerical Homogenization: From a Game Theoretic Approach to Numerical Approximation and Algorithm Design. Vol. 35. Cambridge University Press, 2019.

3

I think evolutionary biology is a major application, if you're accepting answers outside of math. The central notion of an evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS) is a Nash equilibrium.


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Surprising applications of the theory of games?

14

I am currently studying the applications of games in quantum information theory and related fields and I am aware of its uses in places like model theory and set theory. So I was curious, what are some other somewhat surprising places(somewhat because I am aware of the subjectivity of the term) where games were/are useful tools?


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9

To me, the most surprising has been it's application to numerical solutions of PDEs, see here: Owhadi, Houman, and Clint Scovel. Operator-Adapted Wavelets, Fast Solvers, and Numerical Homogenization: From a Game Theoretic Approach to Numerical Approximation and Algorithm Design. Vol. 35. Cambridge University Press, 2019.

edit

This sounds very interesting indeed. - H.C Manu Mar 25, 2022 at 12:15

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