Win-Win (1963)

[James A. Landau]

In a message dated 4/1/01 10:49:32 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Bapopik at AOL.COM 
writes:

<<    From the NEW YORK HERALD TRIBUNE, 5 August 1963, Big Time College 
Football (second of a five part series), pg. 19, cols. 5-8:
 
 _The Amateur Code Ideal:_
 _Losing a Win-Win Game?_
 
 (No "win-win" hits came up on OED online.  Someone there is not doing the 
job job--ed.) >>

"Win-win" and the corresponding term "lose-lose", as well as "zero-sum", come 
from the branch of mathematics known as "Theory of Games" (or at least are 
used in the theory of games, if they did not originate there.)

The name "Theory of Games" was introduced into English by  John von Neumann 
and Oskar Morgenstern in their 1943 book _Theory of Games and Economic 
Behavior _.  This would be a good source to check for the phrase "win-win".

Prior to 1943 most writings on the theory of games were in French and German. 
 The first paper on the subject may have been  "La théorie du jeu et les 
équations intégrales à noyau symétrique," Compt. Rend. Acad. Sci., 173 (Dec. 
19, 1921) by the French mathematician Emile Borel.   An important paper on 
the subject was by the above-referenced John von Neumann in "Zur Theorie der 
Gesellschaftsspiele", Math. Ann. 100.

An interesting note on the vagaries of nomenclature: the modern computer 
(that is, the stored-program digital computer, which species includes all 
PC's and Mac's) is frequently known as a "von Neumann machine" after John von 
Neumann.  Actually the idea was originated by the British mathematician Alan 
Turing.  As it happened, von Neumann published first (in 1945) and his name 
has been used ever since.  Should we rename the modern computer the "Turing 
machine"?  No, because the term "Turing machine" has been used in logic since 
1937 with a highly specific meaning.

       - James A. Landau
         systems engineer
         FAA Technical Center (ACT-350/BCI)
         Atlantic City Airport NJ 08405 USA



THEORY OF GAMES appears in the title

The term Theorie der Gesellschaftsspiele appears in 1928 in the title,  
Gesellschaftsspiele is translated as "parlor games" by Kramer [James A. 
Landau]. 

Referring to the 1928 paper, von Neumann's collaborator Herman H. Goldstine 
wrote in The Computer from Pascal to von Neumann (1972): 

This was his first venture in the field [of game theory], and while there had 
been other tentative approaches --- by Borel, Steinhaus, and Zermelo, among 
others --- his was the first to show the relations between games and economic 
behavior and to formulate and prove his now famous minimax theorem which 
assures the existence of good strategies for certain important classes of 
games.
Theory of games also appears in 1943 in the title Theory of Games and 
Economic Behavior by John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern [James A. 
Landau]. 
Game theory appears in 1954 in The Compleat Strategyst by J. D. Williams 
(David, 1998).