THE STRATEGY OF CONFLICT

A young mathematician was recently offered a grant by a

large foundation, subject to some rather unusual conditions. He re-
ceived a set of three application forms, identical in every respect, ex-
cept that the first was marked R1, the second R2 and the third R3.
The instructions that accompanied the forms directed him to fill out
and submit any one of the three he chose. They said that the founda-
tions administrators would also make one of three choices, C1, C2
and C3, before they received his application. The instructions also
mentioned that the foundations founder required the administrators

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to minimize the grants duration; the mathematician, of course,
wanted maximum duration. This table on the instruction sheet indi-
cated how the grant would be awarded.

FOUNDATIONSCHOICE

If the mathematician chose R1 and the foundation chose C1,

the grant would be awarded for two years; if he chose R3 and they
chose C2, it would be awarded for five years; if he chose R2 and
they chose C3, it would be awarded for six years. Despite their ap-
parent conflict of interest, however, the mathematician got a five-
year grant from the administrators, resolving the situation to their
mutual satisfaction.
The story of the young mathematician and the foundation ad-
ministrators is not taken from real life, but from Elements of Linear
Programming, a mathematical textbook by William J. Adams, Allan
Gewirtz and Louis V. Quintas. (D. Van Nostrand Company, Inc.,
Princeton, N. J., 1968) And their example is really a special case of
one branch of classic game theory.
Game theory, which seeks to deal with any human situation
that involves conflict of interest, is useful to economists, political
scientists, sociologists, experimental psychologists, management con-
sultants and the military. It is, in fact, one of the first examples of
an elaborate mathematicaledevelopment centered solely in the social
sciences. (R. Duncan Luce and Howard Raiffa, Games and Deci-
sions: Zntroduction and Critical Survey, John Wiley & Sons, Inc.,
1957) Game theory applies in every conflict situation where a deci-
sion must be made and strategy, rather than pure chance, is the
operative element. It indicates methods of making optimal choices
and includes some aspects of the collusion and communication which
individuals may use to improve their payoffs.

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 Using the information that the foundation people wanted to
minimize the duration of his grant, the mathematician saw that if he
picked R2 his minimum grant would be for one year, if he picked
R1 it would be for no less than two years, but if he picked R3 it would
be for at least five years. So he picked the application form that gave
him the maximum of these minimums, R3. The foundation people,
knowing that the mathematician would try to maximize the years
of his grant, saw that if they chose C1 the maximum grant would be
for nine years, C3 would be for eight years, and C2 would be for
only five years. So they chose the column with the minimum of these
maximums, C2. The intersection of R3 and C2 is five years, and both
the foundation people and the mathematician were satisfied. Acting
rationally neither could do better.
The mathematician and the administrators were playing a two-
person zero-sum game, described by mathematical theory as a game
having two players, a row player-in this case the mathematician-
and a column player-the foundation. In two-person zero-sum games,
one players loss is always the negative of the other players gain and
the sum of gain and loss is zero. The table of values, or payoff matrix,
lists payoffs from column to row player under all game conditions.
Each player makes only one move and that without knowledge of the
other players move. It is assumed that both players are rational, and
will try to do their best within payoff matrix restrictions.
Such games can be solved for payoffs that are mutually satisfac-
tory to both players. This payoff matrix, whichcontains negative num-
bers, is a little more complex than the one used for the mathematician-
foundation game, but negative numbers represent the row players
payoffs to the column player in the same way that positive numbers

COLUMN PLAYER

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represent the column players payoffs to the row player. If they are
thought of as dollar values, this game is no more difficult than
the mathematician-foundation game. Readers are invited to find its
solution, which includes the column that the column player should
play, the row the row player should play, and the resulting optimum
payoff. Answers will be given in the April, 1969, issue of THE
SCIENCES.
THE THEORY OF CONFLICT

There are other types of games -two-person non-zero-sum

games with unequal gain and loss, n person games with any number
of players, and games with imperfect information in which possible
results of given actions are at least partially unknown. But every
game imaginable is subsumed under game theory, developed over
the last forty years by John von Neumann and other mathematicians.
Von Neumann published his first papers on game theory in Germany
in 1928 and 1937, but the classic in the field is his Theory of Games
and Economic Behavior, written with Oskar Morgenstern. (Prince-
ton University Press, 2nd ed., N. J., 1947)
Von Neumanns goal was an abstract mathematical expression
for all forms of conflict situations. Game theorys tools include every
mathematical technique - simple arithmetic, geometry, algebra,
graph theory, the theory of convex sets, probability theory. Common
to all games is a payoff matrix and the concepts of minimax-the
minimum of maximum payoffs, and maximin-the maximum of min-
imum payoffs.
TOTAL STRATEGY

A strategy of a player in a given game is a complete plan of

behavior which specifies the players behavior, that is his decision,
for all possible circumstances that may arise during the course
of play, says Ewald Burger in his Introduction to the Theory of
Games. (Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1963) Each
player of game theory games must decide which choice to make so
that his partial influence over the result benefits him most. He as-
sumes that the other player is rational: he will try to do the best he
can under the given circumstances.
The strictures of game theory limit its applications in economic,
social and political situations. There are too many uncertain vari-
ables for satisfactory mathematical expression, and because people
often behave illogically and irrationally, critics challenge game the-

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orists to include the culled knowledge of psychology and sociology
in their models. The reply is likely to be a variation on the theme
that for the most part, this knowledge is not in a sufficiently pre-
cise form to be incorporated as assumptions in a mathematical
model. (Games and Decisions) Game theory is a beautiful abstrac-
tion, its critics conclude, whose practical value is relatively small.
But game theory has been successfully applied in both economic
and warfare situations. Economists at the American Telephone and
Telegraph Company, for example, use game theory to help decide
on the optimum financial strategy for making short-term investments
of the corporations liquid assets. Mathematician Dr. Rufus Isaacs in
Diflerential Games (John Wiley & Sons, 1965 ) describes games de-
veloped to solve such military problems as the optimal trajectories
of ICBMs and how, ideally, a general divides his armys efforts be-
tween destroying the enemys source of weapon supply and directly
attacking military targets. In the contest between opposing armies-
or nations-game theory indicates optimal strategy. When forces of
any type are approaching one another, Dr. Isaacs writes, how best
should each distribute (or conserve) his firepower? Too early action
is wasteful because of the small hit probability; too late action risks
the enemys firing first and decimating too much potential fire before
it is put into action.
PLAYING AGAINST NATURE

Game theory neatly describes many conflict situations, and

some mathematicians view all decision-making as two-person zero-
sum games. Said mathematical statistician Abraham Wald, In a
decision problem the experimenter wants to minimize the risk. The
risk, however, depends on two variables, and the experimenter can
choose only the decision function but not the distribution. The true
distribution, we may say, is chosen by Nature, and Natures choice
is unknown to the experimenter. Thus the situation that arises here
is very similar to that of a two-person game. The analogy seems to be
complete except for one point. Whereas the experimenter wishes to
minimize the risk, we can hardly say that Nature wishes to maximize
(it). Nevertheless, since Natures choice is unknown to the experi-
menter, it is perhaps not unreasonable for the experimenter to behave
as if Nature wanted to maximize the risk. (Statistical Decision Func-
tions, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1950)
Physicians often find themselves in exactly the situation de-
scribed by Dr. Wald. H. A. F. Dudley, Chairman of the Department

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of Surgery at Alfred Hospital in Melbourne, Australia, cites an
example of a physician playing a two-person zero-sum game with
Nature. A child is admitted to the hospital with acute abdominal
pain which is first central and then in the right iliac fossa. There is
fever and tenderness in the right lower abdomen. The differential
diagnosis lies (for simplicity) between acute appendicitis and acute
non-specific mesenteric lymphadenitis. Often there will be confirma-
tory signs of one or the other but not infrequently the surgeon is left
with the feeling that although he is doubtful about the existence of
appendicitis he cannot be sure. He will then operate prepared to have
a live mistake rather than a dead certainty. The payoff matrix for
this game is:
NATURE PLAYS

Even without such analysis it is obvious that the physicians safe

strategy is to choose appendicitis whatever the patient has (i.e., if
one regards Nature as the opponent, whatever Nature plays).
(Pay-off, Heuristics, and Pattern Recognition in the Diagnostic
Process, The Lancet, Sept. 28, 1968)
Physicians make such decisions daily without knowledge of
game theory, but the doctors dilemma illustrates the relevance of
game theory to practical decision-making. Thousands of social, eco-
nomic and political problems await mathematical description-and
prescription. Although mathematicians have not achieved compre-
hensive expression of mankinds conflicts, hopefully game theory
may one day play a role in their solution. 00