Course schedule (tentative) and Lecture Topics

 

·       Monday 8/26— Introduction (course topics and an example)

o   See scribe notes, notes from lecture,  and Sections 1.2 and 1.3 of Roughgarden’s book.

·       Wednesday 8/28— Game Theory Basics:  Nash equilibrium, correlated equilibrium, Bayes Nash,

o   See scribe notes, notes from lecture, Sections 13.1 of Roughgarden’s book.

·       Friday 8/30— Hotelling Game and the price of anarchy for pure equilibria

o   See scribe notes, and notes from lecture.

·       Monday 9/2— Labor Day, no class

·       Wednesday 9/4— Weighted Majority learning algorithm (lecture by Bobby Kleinberg)

o   See scribe notes, and notes from lecture, Section 1.2 of Roth’s lecture notes.

·       Friday 9/6— Hedge as a No-regret Learning Algorithm (lecture by Bobby Kleinberg)

o   See scribe notes, and notes from lecture, Section 1.3 of Roth’s lecture notes or Section 17.1-17.3 in Roughgarden’s book.

·       Monday 9/9— First price, second price, and all pay auctions as games

o   See scribe notes, and notes from lecture, Chapter 2 of Roughgarden’s book

·       Wednesday 9/11— The danger of using of learning agent in Auctions (lecture by Yoav Kolumbus)

o   See scribe notes, and slides from lecture

·       Friday 9/13 — Learning outcomes in 2-person 0-sum games

o   See scribe notes, and notes from lecture, Chapter 2 of Roth’s lecture notes or Section 18.3 and 18.4 in Roughgarden’s book

·       Friday 9/13: Problem set 1 due

·       Monday 9/16 — Learning outcomes in 0-sum games continued

o   See scribe notes, notes from lecture, and Chapter 2 of Roth’s lecture notes or Section 18.3 and 18.4 in Roughgarden’s book

·       Wednesday 9/18 — Learning outcomes in general games: coarse correlated equilibrium

o   See scribe notes, notes from lecture and Section 3.1 of Roth’s lecture notes or Section 17.4 in Roughgarden’s book.

·       Friday 9/20 – hierarchy of equilibrium concepts and price of anarchy for learning outcomes

o   See scribe notes, notes from lecture Section 13.1, Section 14.1 and Section 14.4 in Roughgarden’s book

·       Monday 9/23 –price of anarchy in auctions

o   See scribe notes, notes from lecture, and the survey The Price of Anarchy in Auctions.

·       Wednesday 9/25 –price of anarchy in Bayesian auctions

o   See scribe notes,  notes from lecture, and the survey The Price of Anarchy in Auctions

·       Friday 9/27 – Auctions with multiple items

o   See scribe notes, notes from lecture, the survey The Price of Anarchy in Auctions

·       Monday – 9/30 – Price of Anarchy in non-atomic Routing games

o   See scribe notes,  notes from lecture,  Section 11 in Roughgarden’s book

·       Wednesday 10/2 – Price of Anarchy in non-atomic Routing games (cont.)

o   See scribe notes,  notes from lecture, and Section 11 in Roughgarden’s book

·       Friday 10/4 – Price of Anarchy for with Overprovisioning

o   See scribe notes,   notes from lecture, and Section 12 in Roughgarden’s book

·       Friday 10/4 Problem set 2 due

·       Monday – 10/7 – Atomic routing games Price of Anarchy

o   See scribe notes, notes from lecture, and Section 13 in Roughgarden’s book

·       Wednesday 10/9 – Congestion games and Potential games

o   See scribe notes,  notes from lecture, and Section 13.3 in Roughgarden’s book

·       Friday 10/11 – Congestion games and price of stability

o   See scribe notes,  notes from lecture, and Section 15.1-2 in Roughgarden’s book

·       Monday 10/14 Fall break

o   no class

·       Wednesday 10/16 – Learning via Follow the Perturbed Leader

o   See first half of the scribe notes,  notes from lecture, and Section 1.4 of Roth’s lecture notes.

·       Friday 10/18 –Follow the Perturbed Leader as a No-regret Learning Algorithm

o   See second half of the scribe notes,  notes from lecture, and Section 1.4 of Roth’s lecture notes.

·       Monday 10/21 –Learning without full feedback

o   See scribe notes,  notes from lecture, and Section 1.4 of Roth’s lecture notes

·       Wednesday 10/23 – How to play against a no-regret learner

o   See scribe notes, notes from lecture, and the paper Strategizing against No-regret Learners

·       Friday 10/25 – How to play against a no-regret learner (continued) and improved learning

o   See scribe notes,  notes from lecture, the paper above as well as the papers Selling to a no-regret buyer and Strategizing against Learners in Bayesian Games

·       Monday 10/28 – Improved learning: no swap regret

o   See scribe notes,   notes from lecture, Chapter 3 of Roth’s lecture notes or a simpler description just for swap-regret in the paper From External to Internal Regret.

·       Tuesday 10/29 Problem set 3 due

·       Wednesday 10/30 – Algorithmic Learning and Collusion (using no-regret learning)

o   See scribe notes,   notes from lecture, or the paper  Algorithmic Collusion Without Threats

·       Friday 11/1 – Algorithmic Learning and Collusion continued

o   See scribe notes,   notes from lecture, or the papers Artificial Intelligence and Pricing: The Impact of Algorithm Design and Artificial Intelligence and spontaneous collusion

·       Monday 11/4–– Difficulty of bidding in multi-item auctions

o   See scribe notes, notes from lecture, or the paper Learning in auctions: Regret is hard, envy is easy

·       Wednesday 11/6 – Follow the Leader in multi-item auctions

o   See scribe notes,  notes from lecture, or the paper Learning in auctions: Regret is hard, envy is easy

·       Friday 11/8– More on auctions: second price and more complex valuations

o   See scribe notes, notes from lecture, and the survey The Price of Anarchy in Auctions

·       Friday 11/8 Project proposal due

·       Monday 11/11–– Learning and Price of Anarchy in auctions with more complex valuations

o   See scribe notes, notes from lecture, and the survey The Price of Anarchy in Auctions and the paper Learning in auctions: Regret is hard, envy is easy

·       Wednesday 11/13 – No class. Suggest attending the talk by Sendhil Mullainathan

·       Friday 11/15 – resource sharing: price of anarchy via equilibrium analysis.

o   See scribe notes,  notes from lecture, and the paper Efficiency Loss in a Network Resource Allocation Game

·       Monday 11/18–– Games with collaboration and the strong price of anarchy

o   See scribe notes, notes from lecture, and the paper Strong Equilibrium in Cost-Sharing Connection Games

·       Wednesday 11/20– complexity of finding correlated equilibria

o   See scribe notes, notes from lecture, and also Sections 13 and 19 in Roughgarden’s book, see the paper Polynomial-time computation of exact correlated equilibrium in compact games for how to find a correlated equilibrium in games

·       Friday 11/22 – extensive form games: 2-person 0-sum

o   See scribe notes,  notes from lecture.

·       Friday 11/22 Problem set 4 due

·       Monday 11/25 – finding equilibria in 0-sum games and learning in extensive form games

o   See scribe notes, notes from lecture, and the paper Complexity of 2-person 0-sum games in extensive form

·       Wednesday & Friday, 11/27-29, Thanksgiving break, no class

·       Monday 12/2–– learning in extensive form games

o   See scribe notes, notes from lecture, and the papers Regret Minimization in Games with Incomplete Information, Coarse Correlation in Extensive-Form Games and for corelated equilibrium see Simple Uncoupled No-Regret Learning Dynamics for Extensive-Form Correlated Equilibrium

·       Wednesday 12/4– auctions with budgets

o   See scribe notes,  notes from lecture, and paper Liquid Welfare guarantees for No-Regret Learning in Sequential Budgeted Auctions

·       Friday 12/6 – project presentations and auctions with budgets continued

o   See scribe notes for the auctions with budgets part.

·       Monday 12/9 – History of online search auctions and generalized second prize

o   See scribe notes, and notes from lecture (including the proof that we ran out of time for), the papers Internet Advertising and the Generalized Second-Price Auction: Selling Billions of Dollars Worth of Keywords and Bounding the inefficiency of outcomes in generalized second price auctions

·       Monday, 12/9 project due, last day of classes

·       Take home final exam, our assigned due date is December 19th 4:30 PM