Instructor: Elliot Anshelevich,
WebEx meeting room,
eanshel@cs.rpi.edu
Time and Place: Tuesdays and Fridays,
12:00pm-1:50pm, CARNEGIE 201
Office Hours: Tuesday 2pm-3pm (in person in Lally 311) and Thursday 3:30pm-4:30pm (on Webex)
All announcements will be made on the class LMS: https://lms.rpi.edu/
Course Overview
This course is a broad introduction to the interface of theoretical computer science and game theory, and will focus especially on game theory in network and computer science applications. The emphasis will be on conceptual ideas and algorithmic techniques. After completing this course, students should be able to analyze and design efficient algorithms and mechanisms for a variety of computational problems having to do with self-interested agents. Prerequisites: CSCI 4020 or equivalent. No prior knowledge of game theory or economics will be assumed, but a high level of comfort with proofs, graph algorithms, and mathematical concepts will be required.
Books
There are two required course textbooks. I suggest buying the printed versions either at the campus store or online. Note, however, that versions of both are available online for free:
Homework, Exams, and Grading
Although most of the lectures will be drawn from the textbooks, we will cover many topics that do not appear in the text, and the textbooks include material that we will not cover in class. You are responsible for the content of the lectures. If you miss a lecture make sure to get notes from another student, or ask the instructor about the topics covered. Students are encouraged to attend all classes. Your active in-class participation will be a substantial part of your learning process, and will be taken into consideration when final grades are determined.
Homeworks will be assigned approximately every 2 weeks. Homework should be submitted on Gradescope as a printable pdf file. As with all assignments submitted online, it is the student's responsibility to verify that the correct files successfully uploaded, and that the files can be read by the instructor. Late homeworks will not be accepted, except in case of a genuine emergency. An exception to this is that every student is allocated two late submissions, which allow the student to turn in a homework up to 3 days late. You cannot use more than one late submission for the same homework, or use a late submission after already turning something in. Any request to re-evaluate a grade must be made within one week of the return date of the homework or exam in question. You must explain why you think your grade should be changed in writing, and submit your request together with the original problem solution. The second grade will remain.
You are allowed (and encouraged) to discuss homework problems with other members of the class, and to formulate ideas together. However, everyone must write up their assignments separately, and include the names of everyone you discussed the assignment with. You may not copy (or near-copy) a solution from another student or another source; everything you turn in must be your own work. Failure to write the solution to a homework completely on your own will be considered a breach of academic integrity, and may result in the final grade being reduced by a letter and a 0-grade for the homework or exam. You may not consult any sources except the ones specifically mentioned on the class webpage (this means no Internet, no papers that are not specifically mentioned on the webpage, no people outside of this class, no AI tools of any kind, etc). No collaboration is allowed during exams.
You are required to prove your statements, unless otherwise specified. If a homework or exam question asks you to design an algorithm for a certain task, then the answer must consist of a description of the algorithm (an English description is fine), as well as an analysis of its running time and a proof of its correctness.
There will be a midterm exam, as well as a final exam during finals week. The final exam will be worth 30% of your grade, the midterm 20%, and the homework will be worth 50%.
Both exams and homeworks will contain some special problems labeled with a (*). These problems are optional; however to receive an A or A- in this class you must do these problems. More precisely, at the end of the semester I will calculate two grades: one without the (*) problems, and one including the (*) problems. The grade without the (*) problems will be capped at 85 percent. Then I will take the maximum of these two grades to determine your final score. Final scores will correspond to the following letter grades: A/A-: 85-100; B+/B/B-: 70-85; final scores of less than 70 percent will result in a failing grade.