Game Theory
Game theory can be used to model competition and cooperation in economics, biology, military conflict, and even in games such as poker. In applications of game theory, it is generally assumed that the players will gravitate towards playing some Nash equilibrium, a choice of strategies for all players with the property that no single player can improve their payoff by changing their strategy. Which Nash equilibrium is played becomes problematic when there is more than one; more so when different players have different preferences over the set of equilibria. A more recent concept of an equilibrium in a game is that of a correlated equilibrium in which a “choreographer” coordinates the actions of the players towards a single solution. The advantage of this is that each player may do better following the directions of the choreographer than they would be able to do acting independently.