Generator

Best replies in a coordination game

A generator in the applied library, called 60 times across 9 essays. Below: what it draws with nothing chosen and at each mode an essay asks for, what it checks while drawing, and everywhere it is used.

game is one function. Everything below came out of it during this build, at parameters taken from the essays rather than invented for this page — so a figure here is the same figure a reader meets in an essay, and if the generator changes, this page changes with it.

With nothing chosen

Best replies in a coordination game. A bimatrix with every best reply marked on both sides and every cell that is a best reply for both boxed as a pure equilibrium. 2 such cells were found.

A population that settles at 2/3

A population that settles at 2/3. A contest over a prize worth 4 that costs 6 to fight for. Left: the growth rate of the share playing Hawk against that share, which is nought at 0, at 2/3 and at 1. Right: the share over time from 5 starting points, all converging on 2/3.

A population that circles its equilibrium for ever

A population that circles its equilibrium for ever. The triangle of all mixtures of rock, paper and scissors, with a win worth 1 and a loss costing 1, and 2 population trajectories under the replicator dynamic around the equilibrium at a third each.

A signal both can see, and neither wants to disobey

A signal both can see, and neither wants to disobey. A two-by-two game with a distribution over its four cells, drawn as the weight on each. Obeying the recommendation is a best reply for both choosers, and the pair collects 21/2 between them.

Best replies in a game with no pure equilibrium

Best replies in a game with no pure equilibrium. A bimatrix with every best reply marked on both sides and every cell that is a best reply for both boxed as a pure equilibrium. No such cell was found.

The value of a 2×3 zero-sum game, named from both sides

The value of a 2×3 zero-sum game, named from both sides. The row chooser's expected payoff against each column as a line over the mixing probability, with the lower envelope and its maximum, beside the same construction from the column chooser's side. Both give 19/15.

What it checks while it draws

Collected by running the family and recording what it asserted, not written here. The count is how many separate times the claim was put to the test while these drawings were made.

Where it is called

Every figure on this list is drawn by the same rule, so a change to the rule changes all of them at once. That is why the list is published.

Applied

A mixture that is a population

A mixed equilibrium between two choosers is a knife-edge nobody has a reason to stand on. Read the same mixture as a population whose shares grow with how well they do, and it becomes a point every population is carried to — or one every population circles for ever without arriving.

Applied

A signal both can see

Two choosers who randomise privately can reach a set of outcomes that is smaller, and worse, than the set they reach when a device draws one cell and whispers each of them their half of it. Nothing is enforced and nobody is bound, and the arrangement is stable anyway.

Applied

Patience instead of a contract

Commitment had to assume an announcement binds. Play the same game again tomorrow and the assumption is unnecessary — the future does the binding. What it costs is that nearly every outcome becomes an equilibrium, so a theory that could not choose between two now cannot choose between infinitely many.

Applied

The landscape nobody is looking at

Letting participants move one at a time to whatever is currently better can cycle forever, and on a network of congestible roads it cannot. The reason is a single number attached to each state that falls by exactly what the mover saves.

Applied

The reading that is almost right

Every account of simultaneous choice so far has assumed the payoffs are known to both choosers and known to be known. Replace that with each chooser seeing a private reading off by a little, and a band of equilibria closes to a single point — so the assumption nobody states decides the answer.

Applied

The road that makes everyone later

An equilibrium is a state nobody can improve alone, which is a much weaker thing than a state anybody would choose. Adding a link that costs nothing to use makes every traveller in this network strictly slower, and the arithmetic says by exactly how much.

Applied

The value from both sides

Two choosers move at the same instant, and each asks the cautious question — how much can be guaranteed, whatever the other does. With pure choices the two answers are usually different numbers; allow a probability and they are forced to be the same one.

Applied

Two equilibria and no way to choose

A game can have two states nobody wants to leave, one paying more than the other, and the definition of an equilibrium has nothing to say about which happens. The two standard tie-breakers disagree, and the one that wins is usually the worse.

Applied

Worth more for being seen first

Moving first sounds like a disadvantage, since the other side gets to see the move and answer it. When the move is a mixture that is announced and believed, it is never a disadvantage, it is worth exactly nothing in a game of pure conflict, and in other games it is worth more than any equilibrium — sometimes by announcing an action that would never be played in secret.

The whole library · What the figures prove