1, 2, 3
1, 2, 3
1, 2, 3
Hey guys, what are you doing?
Oh hello.
We got a friend over here.
Who are you?
I'm Kevin.
Oh, that's nice.
I'm Yoav.
I'm Matt.
I guess we got to play a game, huh?
What do you suggest?
How about some blackjack?
I could do that.
I'm a novice.
Okay.
I'm a novice, so let's play for low stakes
like say a thousand dollars?
It's a deal.
Alright.
Let's see who wins.
Hit me.
You want a card?
What are the rules again?
Well, you try and get to 21.
Anybody who gets to 21 wins.
If you go over 21, you're going to lose.
I see.
I don't know.
I guess I'll stay with what I have.
I want to take one more.
Ah, I'm over.
So, what happens now?
Well, you guys figure out who's got the most.
I got 19 here.
Try to beat that.
Oh, what do you know?
Look what I got.
Twenty one.
Oh, blackjack.
Ah, well, good thing we didn't play for too
much money.
That is $1,000 for Yoav.
I think there are some other people watching
us here.
We got to introduce ourselves a little bit
more formally.
Well, I'll start.
I'm Kevin.
I'm the Associate Professor of Computer Science
at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver,
Canada.
My research is in artificial intelligence,
game theory, electronic commerce and algorithms.
I'm Matt Jackson.
I'm a Professor of Economics at Stanford University
and I do research in game theory and social
networks and a variety of microeconomic topics.
And I'm Yoav Shoham.
I'm also a Professor here at Stanford.
Like Kevin I'm also a computer scientist in
artificial intelligence and electronic commerce
and game theory.
And we're here to co-teach the class on game
theory.
So, maybe let's start by saying little bit
about what game theory is about and as importantly
what it's not about.
So, often when we think about game we do think
about things such as rock-paper-scissors
or poker or sports games like soccer and baseball,
but really game theory is about all kind of
strategic interactions among self-interested
agent including those frivolous one but also
much more serious ones.
Matt, you're the economist.
Tell us more about serious games.
Sure.
Game theory has become a really essential
tool to understanding a lot of different interactions.
Anything from auctions to people's behavior
in financial markets even to international
conflict to understanding political interactions.
So, it's become an essential part of any social
scientists to abut and indeed it's actually
used even beyond that.
So, things like biology, predator prey games,
a whole series of things.
So, it's really a fairly widely applicable
thing in any situation where there's competition,
strategic interaction.
There's a lot to cover here.
That makes sense but now, Kevin, you and I
are computer scientists; what are we doing
here?
Well, these days game theory is a really hot area in computer science for really a couple
of reasons.
First of all, computers have really turned
into ways of bringing different people together.
That's true whether you're thinking about
how to design networks, whether you're thinking
about the keyword options that make billions
of dollars a year for Google, whether you're
thinking about peer-to-peer file sharing or
consumer focusing things like eBay.
All of these if you really want to understand
them they require modeling self-interested
participants and the way that they strategically interact with each other.
Separately, a lot of the problems that economic teachers like Matt think about when they get bigger they
have computational dimension.
So, as you want to solve these problems in
the real world it's necessary to leverage
ideas from algorithms, complexity theory and artificial intelligence to make them working
like this.
So, let's speak a little bit about our class.
Firstly, expectations, well, for all these potential application we're discussing our class would
really be very fundamental about the very
fundamental modeling tools here.
We will not attempt to advise people on how to use it really in the real world any direct way.
We'll only use examples by a way of illustrating the formal constructs.
So, let's speak a little bit about this syllabus.
Sure.
So, the course will run about 7 weeks.
It's really an introductory course.
It doesn't presume that people have any experience
in game theory before.
It will assume a tiny bit of background in probability and in calculus but generally it should be
accessible to a pretty wide range of people.
Our intention is just to show people how are
games structured, how do we think about strategic
interaction between people. We'll start with
equilibrium notions.
We'll talk about incomplete information.
We'll talk about timing, repeated games.
We'll also talk about coalitional structures.
So, we have quite a bit of things to cover,
but it should be a very fun course.
Kevin, you want to speak a little bit about
some of the mechanics and what people need
to do and so on?
Sure.
There's a lot to this course besides videos.
Some of which is graded and some of which
isn't.
So, on the ungraded side we'll have quizzes
to test comprehension after the videos.
We'll have review quizzes to help you see
if you put everything together at the end
of the course, at the end of concessions.
We'll have lab exercises where you can play
games with every student and discuss them
afterwards.
Then your grade will come from problem sets in the final exam, which � you will be able to take once but you
will be able to take on your own schedule.
And in the end you'll get a certificate of
completion that's signed by all of us.
So, that would be the total of 7 weeks
as we said.
We should also mention that this is a very
large class.
There is many tens of thousands of students
here.
So, we'll do our best to be clear in our presentations
but a lot of this will involve help among
the students themselves.
So, there are online forums and they're an
essential part of the class.
You really want to form study groups to consult
each other on the problem sets, on the lectures.
We do have TAs that will monitor the forums
both TAs at British Columbia and at Stanford
as well as community TAs that have stepped
up, but at the end of the day it will only
work if as a community we all work together.
Please, because of the large numbers don't
send us personal email.
It's not that we don't like to speak to you.
We just won't be able to handle it.
So, we won't be able to respond.
Similarly, there is the class website on . . . on
the class website as well as on the social
media.
If you want to kind of follow us personally
on our personal sites, by all means but no
please friend request and so on.
Again, the numbers are so large we won't be
able to respond.
This is really going to be a fun class; isn't
it?
Oh yeah, I'm looking forward to it.
It should be a great time.
I had a lot of fun with that previous game.
Yeah.
Actually, I think it's time for Kevin and
I to win some money back.
Oh, let's see how good you are.
Okay.
