Discrete mathematics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Game theory, decision theory, utility theory, social choice theory

	Cooperate	Defect
Cooperate	-1, -1	-10, 0
Defect	0, -10	-5, -5
Payoff matrix for the Prisoner's dilemma, a common example in game theory. One player chooses a row, the other a column; the resulting pair gives their payoffs

Decision theory is concerned with identifying the values, uncertainties and other issues relevant in a given decision, its rationality, and the resulting optimal decision.

Utility theory is about measures of the relative economic satisfaction from, or desirability of, consumption of various goods and services.

Social choice theory is about voting. A more puzzle-based approach to voting is ballot theory.

Game theory deals with situations where success depends on the choices of others, which makes choosing the best course of action more complex. There are even continuous games, see differential game. Topics include auction theory and fair division.

[edit] Discretization

Main article: Discretization

Discretization concerns the process of transferring continuous models and equations into discrete counterparts, often for the purposes of making calculations easier by using approximations. Numerical analysis provides an important example.

[edit] Discrete analogues of continuous mathematics

There are many concepts in continuous mathematics which have discrete versions, such as discrete calculus, discrete probability distributions, discrete Fourier transforms, discrete geometry, discrete logarithms, discrete differential geometry, discrete exterior calculus, discrete Morse theory, difference equations, discrete dynamical systems, and discrete vector measures.

In applied mathematics, discrete modelling is the discrete analogue of continuous modelling. In discrete modelling, discrete formulae are fit to data. A common method in this form of modelling is to use recurrence relations.

[edit] Hybrid discrete and continuous mathematics

The time scale calculus is a unification of the theory of difference equations with that of differential equations, which has applications to fields requiring simultaneous modelling of discrete and continuous data.

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