Resource Description

This is version two of a set of lecture notes for MATH 486, Penn State's undergraduate Game Theory course. Game Theory is the study of decision making under competition. The first truly mathematical study of Game Theory was initiated by Von Neumann and Morgenstern. John Nash (of A Beautiful Mind fame) added substantially to the field with his proof of the existence of equilibrium solutions for general sum games. Since then many mathematicians, economists, engineers and others have made substantial contributions to the study of games.

The lecture notes are loosely based on Luce and Raiffa's Games and Decisions: Introduction and Critical Survey. This is the same book John Nash used when he taught (or so I've heard). There are elements from Myerson's book on Game Theory (more appropriate for economists) as well as Morris' book on Game Theory. Naturally, I've also included elements from Von Neuman and Morgenstern's classic tome.

Resource Description

This is a set of lecture notes for MATH 555, Penn State's graduate Numerical Optimization course. Numerical Optimization is the study of maximizing or minimizing functions through numerical techniques. Generally, it's rare to optimize anything other than through numerical techniques (unless of course you're talking about something really simple). Numerical optimization is used every day and is built on techniques from multi-variable calculus, optimization theory (obviously) numerical linear algebra (for algorithm efficiency) and other branches of mathematics.