Complete Information - Complete Vs. Perfect Information

Complete Vs. Perfect Information

Complete and perfect information are importantly different. In a game of complete information, the structure of the game and the payoff functions of the players are commonly known but players may not see all of the moves made by other players (for instance, the initial placement of ships in Battleship); there may also be a chance element (as in most card games). Games of incomplete information arise most frequently in social science rather than as games in the narrow sense. For instance, Harsanyi was motivated by consideration of arms control negotiations, where the players may be uncertain both of the capabilities of their opponents and of their desires and beliefs. Games of incomplete information can be converted into games of complete but imperfect information under the "common prior assumption." This assumption is commonly made for pragmatic reasons, but its justification remains controversial.

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Famous quotes containing the words complete, perfect and/or information:

    We place no particular value upon the possession of a virtue until we detect its complete absence in our adversary.
    Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)

    With sudden roar and aged pine-tree falls,—
    One crash, the death-hymn of the perfect tree,
    Declares the close of its green century.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    I have all my life been on my guard against the information conveyed by the sense of hearing—it being one of my earliest observations, the universal inclination of humankind is to be led by the ears, and I am sometimes apt to imagine that they are given to men as they are to pitchers, purposely that they may be carried about by them.
    Mary Wortley, Lady Montagu (1689–1762)