Game Theory by Matthew Jackson and Yoav Shoham.
Another Stanford course for the Spring of 2012!
From the description:
Popularized by movies such as “A Beautiful Mind”, game theory is the mathematical modeling of strategic interaction among rational (and irrational) agents. Beyond what we call ‘games’ in common language, such as chess, poker, soccer, etc., it includes the modeling of conflict among nations, political campaigns, competition among firms, and trading behavior in markets such as the NYSE. How could you begin to model eBay, Google keyword auctions, and peer to peer file-sharing networks, without accounting for the incentives of the people using them? The course will provide the basics: representing games and strategies, the extensive form (which computer scientists call game trees), Bayesian games (modeling things like auctions), repeated and stochastic games, and more. We’ll include a variety of examples including classic games and a few applications.
Just in time for an election year so you will be able to model what you think is rational or irrational behavior on the part of voters in the U.S. 😉
The requirements:
You must be comfortable with mathematical thinking and rigorous arguments. Relatively little specific math is required; you should be familiar with basic probability theory (for example, you should know what a conditional probability is) and with basic calculus (for instance, taking a derivative).
For those of you not familiar with game theory, I think the course will be useful in teaching you a different way to view the world. Not necessary more or less accurate than other ways, just different.
Being able to adopt a different world view and see its intersections with other world views is a primary skill in crossing domain borders for new insights or information. The more world views you learn, the better you may become at seeing intersections of world views.