Coursework for Special Topics at the Intersection of Social and Information Sciences: CS101A, Section 01

Special Topics at the Intersection of Social and Information Sciences
CS101A, Section 01
Fall 2011

Tuesday/Thursday 13:00 - 14:25
314 Annenberg

Instructor

Katrina Ligett, 316 Annenberg. Office hours by request.

Description

This course will equip students to engage with current topics of active research at the intersection of social and information sciences, including: algorithmic mechanism design; auctions; existence and computation of equilibria; and learning and games.

Prerequisites

No formal prerequisites. This course is intended for graduate students and advanced undergraduates, regardless of whether they have taken CS/SS 241a (Topics in Algorithmic Game Theory) in past years. It is expected that students have the technical maturity to read and engage with original research and are comfortable with the basics of game theory, graph theory, and probability theory.

Reference

No textbook is required. One text you may find useful is
Nisan, Roughgarden, Tardos, and Vazirani (eds), Algorithmic Game Theory, Cambridge University, 2007. The book is available for free here (username=agt1user, password=camb2agt).

Evaluation

Your grade in the course will be based on

participation (including occasional surveys, evaluations, self-evaluations) (20%)
an in-class presentation during the term (20%)
a reaction paper (20%), and
a project (40%).

Resources from similar courses

This course's design, content, and website are based in part on similar courses here at Caltech and at other schools:

Caltech, (CS/SS 241a) Introduction to SISL: Topics in Algorithmic game theory, Adam Wierman, John Ledyard, and Jason Marden
MIT, Topics in Algorithmic Game Theory, Costis Daskalakis
Stanford, Algorithmic Game Theory, Tim Roughgarden
Cornell, Algorithmic Game Theory, Éva Tardos
Cornell, The Structure of Information Networks, Jon Kleinberg