Stnf

CS 324

Computer Science and Game Theory
Syllabus


 

This schedule is tentative: it probably will be changed during the quarter as the course develops.  There is no textbook for this course; instead, the readings will be the original papers we cover.  There will be occasional readings from the Multiagent Systems book (Shoham) and from Modelling Bounded Rationality (Rubinstein), but students don’t need to purchase either textbooks, as handouts of all readings will be given in class. Links to papers are provided below if available.  These papers are not required reading before class, nor will students necessarily be required to learn the entirety of each paper.  The list is provided for reference.

 

 

Date

Topic

Out

Due

Reading Materials

3/30

Normal Form Complexity I

 

 

 

I.                     “The Complexity of Eliminating Dominated Strategies” by Gilboa, Kalai, and Zemel (1989) [handout only]

II.                 Multiagent Systems, chapter 4, p. 124-129

4/1

Normal Form Complexity II

 

 

I.                    A Note on Total Functions, Existence Theorems, and Computational Complexity” by Nimrod Megiddo and Christos H. Papadimitriou. (1989)  [PS]

II.                 "Nash and Correlated Equilibria: Some Complexity Considerations ", by Gilboa and E. Zemel, Games and Economic Behavior, Vol. 1, pp. 80-93, 1989.  [handout only]

III.               Playing Large Games Using Simple Strategies” by Lipton, Markakis, and Mehta (2003) [PS]

IV.               Complexity Results about Nash Equilibria” by Conitzer and Sandholm (2003) [PDF]

4/6

Normal Form Algorithms I

PS 1

 

I.                    The original paper on the Lemke-Howson algorithm (1964) can be found here.

II.                 The graphical interpretation of the Lemke-Howson method can be found in "Computing Equilibria in Two-Player Games" by von Stengel   [PS]

III.               The original paper on that interpretation is “A Note on the Lemke-Howson Algorithm” by Lloyd Shapley (1974). [handout only]

IV.              A good survey for both Lemke-Howson and simplicial subdivision (next class)  is "Computation of Equilibria in Finite Games"  by McKelvey and McLennan    [PS]

4/8

Normal Form Algorithms II

 

 

 

I.                    Search methods are covered in “Simple Search Methods for Finding a Nash Equilibrium” by Porter, Nudelman, and Shoham (2004). [PDF]

4/13

 

 

Normal Form Algorithms III

 

 

 

I.                    The simplicial subdivision method is covered in  The Approximation of Fixed Points of a Continuous Mapping” by Herbert Scarf (1967) [PDF]

II.                 The first paper on continuation methods is “A Global Newton Method To Compute Nash Equilibria” by Govindan and Wilson (2001). [PDF]

4/15

Extensive Form I

PS2

PS1

I.                    Fast Algorithms for Finding Randomized Strategies in Game Trees” by Koller, Megiddo, and von Stengel (1994). [PS]

II.                 The Complexity of Two-Person Zero-Sum Games in Extensive Form” by Koller and Megiddo. Games and Economic Behavior 4:4, October 1992, pages 528--552. [handout only]

4/20

Extensive Form II 

 

  

 

I.                    Generating and Solving Imperfect Information Games” by Koller and Pfeffer (1995) [PS]

II.                 An extended version of the other paper (with more background) is “Representations and Solutions for Game Theoretic Problems” by Koller and Pfeffer (1997) [PS]

4/22

Compact Forms I

 

 

I.                    The original paper on congestion games is “A Class of Games Possessing Pure-Strategy Equilibria” by Rosenthal (1973) [handout only]

II.                 A paper generalizing the notion of congestion games is “Potential Games” by Monderer and Shapley (1996) [PDF]

III.               Local Effect Games” by Leyton-Brown and Tennenholtz (2003) [PDF]

III.               Efficient Nash Computation in Large Population Games with Bounded Influence” by Kearns and Mansour (2002). [PDF]

IV.              The Complexity of Pure Nash Equilibria” by Fabrikant, Papadimitriou, and Talwar (2004). [PS]

4/27

Compact Forms II

 

 

I.                    Graphical Models for Game Theory” by Kearns, Littman, and Singh (2001) [PDF]

II.                 Nash Propagation for Loopy Graphical Games  by Ortiz and Kearns (2002) [PDF]

III.               Correlated Equilibria in Graphical Games” by Kakade, Kearns, Langford, and Ortiz (2002) [PDF]

 

4/29

Compact Forms III

PS3

PS2

I.                    Pure Nash Equilibria: Hard and Easy Games” by Gottlob, Greco, and Scarcello (2003) [PDF]

II.                  Equilibria in Symmetric Games” by Christos Papadimitriou and Tim Roughgarden. (2003) [PS]

5/4

Compact Forms IV

 

 

I.                    Multiagent Influence Diagrams for Representing and Solving Games” by Koller and Milch (2001) [PDF]

II.                 On the NP-Completeness of Finding an Optimal Strategy in Games with Common-Payoffs” by Chu and Halpern (2001) [PDF]

5/6

Repeated Game Best Response

 

 

I.                    Non-Computable Strategies and Discounted Repeated Games” by Nachbar and Zame (1995). [handout only]

II.                 The Complexity of Computing Best Response Automata in Repeated Games” by Gilboa (1988) [handout only]

III.               The Complexity of Computing Best Response Automata in Repeated Games with Mixed Strategies” by Ben-Porath (1990) [handout only]

IV.               On Players with a Bounded Number of States” by Papadimitriou (1989). [handout only]

V.                 Value Lattices for Anytime Optimal Policy Computation in Games”, Pivazyan and Shoham (2004).

5/11

Repeated Game Complexity

 

 

TBA

5/13

Bounded Rationality

PS4

PS3

I.                    Finitely Repeated Games with Finite Automata” by Neyman (1998) [handout only]

II.                 On Bounded Rationality and Computational Complexity” by Papadimitriou and Yannakakis (1994). [handout only]

5/18

TBA

 

 

 

5/20

Cooperative Game Complexity

 

 

I.                    The paper on Papadimitriou games is “On the Complexity of Cooperative Solution Concepts” by Deng and Papadimitriou (1994) [handout only]

II.                 Complexity of Non-Emptiness of the Core” by Conitzer and Sandholm (2002) [PDF]

III.               Computing Shapley Values, Manipulating Value Division Schemes, and Checking Core Membership in Multi-issue Domains” by Conitzer and Sandholm (2004) [PDF]

5/25

Combinatorial Auctions I

 

 

TBA

5/27

Combinatorial Auctions II

 

PS4

TBA

6/1

Recitation

 

 

 

6/8

Final, 7pm – 10pm

 

 

 

 


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