For: Serious beginners in game theory and social decision-making.
Begin here
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Lecture 1 - Introduction: Five First Lessons
Yale’s classroom game makes players, actions and payoffs concrete before introducing formal solution concepts.
A choice changes character when its consequences depend on someone else’s choice. You must consider what the other person can do, what they care about and what they know. Game theory provides a language for making those assumptions explicit; it does not supply those assumptions automatically.
The starting Yale lecture builds a game from a classroom example. Its written first-class summary, dated autumn 2007, makes a valuable distinction between outcomes and payoffs. The same visible outcome can matter differently to people with different preferences. That is why a table of rewards should be examined before declaring a particular action rational.
Follow the second lecture to add beliefs about the other player. Best-response examples then ask what a player should do given a specified expectation. Nash equilibrium adds mutual consistency: each choice is considered against the choices of the others. In the selected coordination lecture, equilibrium is explicitly separated from a good collective outcome. A stable pattern need not be a desirable one.
Gendler’s treatment of the prisoners’ dilemma and the commons supplies another disciplinary framing. It helps connect a formal structure to a collective-decision question, but an analogy still needs checking. Do the people have the proposed options? Are the payoffs plausible? Can they communicate, make commitments or expect to meet again? Those are changes to the model, not minor background details.
The final behavioural-games selection points towards a further task: comparing predicted choices with observed ones. A discrepancy can expose a poor behavioural assumption, an incorrect payoff model or an unrepresented feature of the setting. It should not automatically be called irrationality.
The exercise keeps the game small enough to inspect by hand. Find best replies, change one payoff and repeat. Then list what the table omits. This route is a preparation for modelling and criticism, not personal financial or negotiation advice. For a deeper sequence, follow the accompanying path into sequential choices, information sets and repeated interaction.
Build the connection
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Lecture 2 - Putting Yourselves into Other People's Shoes
State beliefs about others. The second lecture adds sophistication and common knowledge to the basic ingredients.
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Lecture 4 - Best Responses in Soccer and Business Partnerships
Find a best response. Worked examples connect a belief about another player to a choice.
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Lecture 5 - Nash Equilibrium: Bad Fashion and Bank Runs
Look for mutual consistency. The equilibrium lecture asks when choices are best responses to each other.
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Lecture 20 - The Prisoner's Dilemma
Compare a philosophical treatment. Gendler discusses the prisoners’ dilemma and commons as collective-decision problems.
NPTEL — National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning
Introduction to Behavioral Games
Enter behavioural games. The NPTEL course offers a route from analytical game theory towards behavioural comparisons.
Change one payoff
Create a two-player, two-action table with explicit outcomes. Circle each player’s best reply to each possible action of the other. Change one payoff and repeat; explain what information the table leaves out.
Exercise or methods at source ↗Read alongside
- Ben Polak: summary of the first Game Theory class, Fall 2007
Distinguish the physical outcome from its value to each player.
Next step
Follow the strategic-interaction path into sequential choices and repeated games.
Limits of this route
The Yale course is from Fall 2007 and formally requires introductory microeconomics, calculus and probability preparation. Its model-based predictions are conditional on assumptions and not automatically empirical descriptions or personal advice. Source checks establish scope and selection usefulness; they do not claim full-video viewing, human review or scientific validation.
Sources and editorial check · 2026-11-07
Individual publisher overviews for selected Yale/MIT material; ordered official NPTEL outlines and available course descriptions; the specifically identified supporting reading sections. Each source record states its inspection limit.
Checked by agent. This is not human peer review.
- Lecture 1 - Introduction: Five First Lessons — official publisher material
- Lecture 2 - Putting Yourselves into Other People's Shoes — official publisher material
- Lecture 4 - Best Responses in Soccer and Business Partnerships — official publisher material
- Lecture 5 - Nash Equilibrium: Bad Fashion and Bank Runs — official publisher material
- Lecture 20 - The Prisoner's Dilemma — official publisher material
- Principles of Behavioral Economics — official course outline
- Ben Polak: summary of the first Game Theory class, Fall 2007
- Game Theory — course context