Edexcel FD2 Specimen — Question 5

Exam BoardEdexcel
ModuleFD2 (Further Decision 2)
SessionSpecimen
TopicDynamic Programming

5.
B plays 1B plays 2B plays 3B plays 4
A plays 14-232
A plays 23-120
A plays 3-1203
A two person zero-sum game is represented by the pay-off matrix for player A given above.
  1. Explain, with justification, how this matrix may be reduced to a \(3 \times 3\) matrix.
  2. Find the play-safe strategy for each player and verify that there is no stable solution to this game. The game is formulated as a linear programming problem for player A .
    The objective is to maximise \(P = V\), where \(V\) is the value of the game to player A.
    One of the constraints is that \(p _ { 1 } + p _ { 2 } + p _ { 3 } \leqslant 1\), where \(p _ { 1 } , p _ { 2 } , p _ { 3 }\) are the probabilities that player A plays 1, 2, 3 respectively.
  3. Formulate the remaining constraints for this problem. Write these constraints as inequalities. The Simplex algorithm is used to solve the linear programming problem.
    The solution obtained is \(p _ { 1 } = 0 , p _ { 2 } = \frac { 3 } { 7 } , p _ { 3 } = \frac { 4 } { 7 }\)
  4. Calculate the value of the game to player A.