Game Theory

[James A. Landau]

In a message dated 04/07/2001 8:05:07 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU writes:

> > Game theory appears in 1954 in The Compleat Strategyst by J. D. Williams
>  > (David, 1998).
>
>  The OED gives this 1954 source as its first use.  Here is an earlier
>  citation:
>
>  1946-47 Carl Kaysen in _Review of Economic Studies_ XIV. 14  It is
>  extremely doubtful whether the degree of restriction of possible solutions
>  offered by the "solution" of game-theory will be great enough to be of
>  much practical value in really complex cases.

There is a Web site on "Earliest Known Uses of Some of the Words of
Mathematics" at http://members.aol.com/jeff570/mathword.html.  This Web site
is the source of the 1954 citation cited above.  I trust Mr. Shapiro will be
pleased to learn that his 1946-7 citation has already been posted there
(where it will be seen by an OED editor who specializes in scientific
terminology.)

This is a very useful site for etymology of mathematical terms.

     - James A. Landau