Game Theory Bard College

Game Theory

Announcements

Final Exam: The final exam will be in-class on Monday, May 22. Here are practice problems for the final.

Projects: The final project for this course involves giving a talk on a topic related to Game Theory. You can work in groups of 2 or 3 people, or you can work by yourself. The following page contains information on the project and some possible project topics:

Excel from class: On Monday, April 3, we did an example in class where we used Excel to compute the maximin and the minimax for a zero-sum game. Here are the Excel files:

Midterm: The midterm exam was in-class on Wednesday, March 15. Here are practice problems for the midterm:

LaTeX: You are required to write homework solutions in LaTeX. Here are some links to get you started:

To download LaTeX to your own computer, Ethan recommends MacTeX for Mac users, and TeX Live for PC users:

Course Requirements

Your grade will be based on homework assignments (40%), two exams (40%), and a project (20%).

Assignments and Syllabus

Week Dates Topics Readings Homework
Week 1 Jan. 30, Feb. 1 Introduction, Nim and Hex Chapter 1
Week 2 Feb. 6, 8 Extensive-form Games Chapter 3
Week 3 Feb. 13, 15 Utility theory Sections 2.1–2.3
Week 4 Feb. 20, 22 Utility Theory Sections 2.4–2.9
Week 5 Feb. 27, March 1 Utility Functions, Strategic-form Games 4.1–4.5
Week 6 March 6, 8 Mixed Strategy Nash Equilibria 4.7–4.11, 5.2.9
Week 7 March 13, 15 Midterm Exam  
Spring Break        
Week 8 March 27, 29 Zero-sum Games 4.12, 5.1-5.2
Week 9 April 3, 5 Maximin and Minimax 5.5-5.6
Week 10 April 10, 12 Maximin and Minimax, Finding Nash Equilibria 5.6, 5.2.6
Week 11 April 17, 19 Nash's Theorem, Evolutionary Game Theory 5.3, 5.8
Week 12 April 24, 26 Repeated Games Chapter 13  
Week 13 May 3 Coalition Games Chapters 16, 18  
Week 14 May 8, 10 Coalition Games, Presentations Chapter 20  
Week 15 May 15, 17 Presentations  
Week 16 May 22 Final Exam