Book cover

Evolution and the Theory of Games is a 1982 book by the British evolutionary biologist John Maynard Smith on evolutionary game theory. In it, Maynard Smith summarises work on evolutionary game theory that had developed in the 1970s, to which he made several important contributions. The book is also noted for being well-written and not overly mathematically challenging. 1982 is a number and represents a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar Events January January 6 - William Bonin is convicted of being the freeway killer. January 8 - AT&T agrees to divest itself of twenty-two subdivisions January 11 - Mark Thatcher, son of the British Prime... A book is a collection of leaves of paper, parchment or other material, bound together along one edge within covers. ... Evolutionary biology is a subfield of biology concerned with the origin and descent of species, as well as their change over time, i. ... John Maynard Smith Professor John Maynard Smith1, F.R.S. (6 January 1920 – 19 April 2004) was a British evolutionary biologist and geneticist. ... Evolutionary game theory (EGT) is the application of game theory in evolutionary biology. ... Events and trends Although in the United States and in many other Western societies the 1970s are often seen as a period of transition between the turbulent 1960s and the more conservative 1980s and 1990s, many of the trends that are associated widely with the Sixties, from the Sexual Revolution...

The main contribution to be had from this book is the introduction of the Evolutionarily Stable Strategy, or ESS, concept, which states that for a set of behaviours to be conserved over evolutionary time, they must be the most profitable avenue of action when common, so that no alternative behaviour can invade. So, for instance, suppose that in a population of frogs, males fight to the death over breeding ponds. This would be an ESS if any one cowardly frog that does not fight to the death always fares worse (in fitness terms, of course). A more likely scenario is one where fighting to the death is not an ESS because a frog might arise that will stop fighting if it realises that it is going to lose. This frog would then reap the benefits of fighting, but not the ultimate cost. Hence, fighting to the death would easily be invaded by a mutation that causes this sort of "informed fighting." Much complexity can be built from this, and Maynard Smith is outstanding at explaining in clear prose and with simple math. The evolutionarily stable strategy (or ESS; also evolutionary stable strategy) is a central concept in game theory introduced by John Maynard Smith and George R. Price in 1973 (a full account is given by Maynard Smith, 1982). ...

Contents

1. Introduction
2. The basic model
3. The war of attrition
4. Games with genetic models
5. Learning the ESS
6. Mixed strategies-I. A classification of mechanisms
7. Mixed strategies-II. Examples
8. Asymmetric games-I. Ownership
9. Asymmetric games-II. A classification, and some illustrative examples
10. Asymmetric games-III. Sex and generation games
11. Life history strategies and the size game
12. Honesty, bargaining and commitment
13. The evolution of cooperation
14. Postscript

• Appendices.

(NB: ESS is the evolutionarily stable strategy) The evolutionarily stable strategy (or ESS; also evolutionary stable strategy) is a central concept in game theory introduced by John Maynard Smith and George R. Price in 1973 (a full account is given by Maynard Smith, 1982). ...

References

• ISBN 0521288843

External links

• Cambridge University Press (http://www.cambridge.org/uk/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521288843)