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NUS Math Module Review: MA4264 Game Theory

It can definitely be daunting for someone completely new to game theory to jump into this module and be greeted by so much new terminology, but a lot of the mathematical concepts formalise ideas that can be intuited, I think. Having additional econs background isn’t a must, but it may help you grasp the concepts better. (The lectures also go through several economic models too) Nevertheless, this module gives you a useful toolkit to examine lots of examples of human behaviour in the real world.

Also those prereqs related to optimisation (MA3236/MA3252/DSC3214/DSN3701) aren’t *too* critical. You’ll lightly rely on optimisation concepts when it comes to maximising rewards / minimising losses in certain games. And at times you’d need to rely on geometric series for certain infinite-stage games. Otherwise the calculations aren’t too tedious, I feel.

Both midterm and final tests were closed book, but final allowed 2-sided helpsheet while midterm didn’t. The questions you’ll encounter often depend heavily on your question comprehension skills, so it’s important to get a good grip on the game theory ideas and know how to reason through the problems thoroughly. On the flip side, you also don’t have to remember too many specific formulae or algorithms.

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