"Adversarial Reasoning" - Worth reading

Please allow me to recommend Adversarial Reasoning: Computational Approaches to Reading the Opponent's Mind (Hardcover) by Alexander Kott (Editor), William M. McEneaney (Editor) availible from Amazon; http://www.amazon.com/Adversarial-Re...612358-2620922.

"Adversarial Reasoning" is a powerful work and relevant for folks who are not computer oriented.

Coming from a liberal arts background (masters in poli-sci, BA in classical humanities), things like sigma notations and multiple Greek letters in a formula make me break out in a cold sweat and the shakes. Despite this disadvantage, the qualitative parts of each chapter were of great relevance to anyone involved in predictive analysis of n-player games (like geo-politics and COIN). Each chapter started with a clear and well articulated presentation of the material before going into the maths and computer applications of the concepts. It is this presentation that I read, before having to go for a lie-down when I saw all the formulae.

The book was laid out logically, with a handy little matrix to show the appropriate chapter for a given sub-topic up front. The first section was a discussion of the opponent and infering and identifying the opponent's intent. The second section was a discussion of deception. The third section was split between the impact of imperfect information and strategizing. Deception (building on the discussions of opponent's intent) was both the best developed concept, and probably the one most directly applicable by the non-computer person. Imperfect information, however, may be the most important discussion in the book as this is the situation most disturbing to real world actors.

The closest thing to a criticism is just a vague perception that the authors might be a little naive about the ruthlessness of real world actors. This may be an artifact of the academic language. Also, a closer examination of situations of asymmetric utility and the impact of this situation on all actors in game play would be valuable to real world applications.

Over all, a great work.

(Previous is a slightly abridged version of my Amazon review of this book)

Give this one a try, it has a lot of meat to help spur the predictive piece of predictive analysis.

Thanks. I just scanned it on Amazon, and it looks like one I'll buy.

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Originally Posted by Van

The closest thing to a criticism is just a vague perception that the authors might be a little naive about the ruthlessness of real world actors. This may be an artifact of the academic language.

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Game Theory has never seemed to deal well with the irrational player. I.e. "One of us has to be reasonable, and it isn't going to be me." Hitler at the Munich Conference is a classic example. I think we face the same situation today with the global insurgency.