Class help- Game Theory

[Schmitty 87]

Ok so I'm in London right now for my junior year abroad, and I just had my first day of lectures today. The lectures were all huge and it seemed like there was little actual teaching going on.

But my main concern is the Game Theory class I'm taking. During the first part of lecture, the professor introduced us to Nim with normal and misere play. Cool. But then he goes on with all this crazy notation and random skribbles on the board about associativity, equivalence, and all sorts of strange proofs. Something to do with the equivalence of all losing games and weird notation that means "if and only if" and proofs going from one way or the other way (whatever that means).

Anyways, it doesn't seem like the class is too math heavy, so I'm not concerned with my qualifications to take the course. I noticed that most other people didn't take many notes if at all, and that confused the [censored] out of me. I didn't understand a single thing he wrote or said, so I was desperately trying to get it all down to figure out later. No luck, of course. It all seems pointless and trivial, or if not that, completely out of the range of my intellect.

Any input from game theory fans or majors? Should I call up Vanessa Rousso? Were any of you blown away at first sight (and I'm not talking about the Prisoner's Dilemma, like weird diagrams and three line equal signs)? I don't know if I want to stick with it or take a cool history course about the Cold War.

Here's a quick idea. He didn't explain any of the terms really, just sorta wrote and talked and wrote and talked.

[b_jerkins]

do you have a textbook?
If you have a textbook, a good play is to stay one step ahead of the class (ie, read/notes from the book of the topics he will be covering before he does them)

I have taken many courses where teachers randomly scribble [censored] on the board. It's very frustrating, but instead of just copying it all down (which is better IMO for some classes/teachers, depending on how/what they write on the board), try actively paying attention and maybe just writing down a few basic concepts, and filling them in with notes on your own later.

GL, this in and of itself is really frustrating and having to deal w/ it while studying abroad must suck

[ShaneP]

[ QUOTE ]
Ok so I'm in London right now for my junior year abroad, and I just had my first day of lectures today. The lectures were all huge and it seemed like there was little actual teaching going on.

But my main concern is the Game Theory class I'm taking. During the first part of lecture, the professor introduced us to Nim with normal and misere play. Cool. But then he goes on with all this crazy notation and random skribbles on the board about associativity, equivalence, and all sorts of strange proofs. Something to do with the equivalence of all losing games and weird notation that means "if and only if" and proofs going from one way or the other way (whatever that means).

Anyways, it doesn't seem like the class is too math heavy, so I'm not concerned with my qualifications to take the course. I noticed that most other people didn't take many notes if at all, and that confused the [censored] out of me. I didn't understand a single thing he wrote or said, so I was desperately trying to get it all down to figure out later. No luck, of course. It all seems pointless and trivial, or if not that, completely out of the range of my intellect.

Any input from game theory fans or majors? Should I call up Vanessa Rousso? Were any of you blown away at first sight (and I'm not talking about the Prisoner's Dilemma, like weird diagrams and three line equal signs)? I don't know if I want to stick with it or take a cool history course about the Cold War.

Here's a quick idea. He didn't explain any of the terms really, just sorta wrote and talked and wrote and talked.

[/ QUOTE ]

A bit of help...three equal signs means identical to--it's sort of 'always equal to' notation, or 'defined as'. The iff (if and only if) you were talking about (and I did mean to type iff) is the symbol you were probably looking at. The forward and backward proof have to do with this. For instance, to prove 'p is true iff q is true', you have to prove if p is true then q is true (forwards) and then if q is true, then p is true (backwards).

It does sound like it's fairly mathematical actually--not in a arithmetic/calculus sort of way, but in a proof and notation sort of way. Maybe it's the first day, maybe the prof is trying to set up examples, and what you're working towards for the rest of the quarter, or maybe that's what he's expecting you to know. My advice is to find out which case it is and figure out if you can handle it...

BTW, I do really like Game theory, especially since my Ph.D. will be very heavy in game theoretic ideas. Sometimes the theory can be fairly easy, but other times there can be lots of twists and lots of math.

Shane

[dj_mercury]

Here is a website that may help you in case you didn't know it: http://www.gametheory.net/ .

[tabako]

"Crazy notation and random skribbles" are most likely math (or at least math notation) you arn't familiar with.

When I took my undergrad game theory class, the only math I had was high school calculus, and I learned a lot of notation. You'll get used to it and it will make understanding future math classes (or applied math classes) much easier.

Something like the following picture (a definition for Nash Equilibrium) was like a foreign language, but now it makes sense to me.



Make sure you make an effort to get a deep understanding of what the symbols mean, otherwise you will waste so much time just trying to translate what the professor is writing, leaving you no time to understand what he is teaching.

[Schmitty 87]

That crazy V looking thing means "all" ya? For all games i...

That's cool, but can the guy at least say what it means? Are students really supposed to have that background knowledge? It's hard because I have no idea what kind of educational experiences the other people in the class have had, so I don't know if I'm in way over my head (this is at LSE btw, so I presume people at are at least moderately intelligent, besides myself of course).

I just got my first problem set. Here's an example question:

Exercise 1.2: The game dominoes is played on a board m x n squares, where players alternately place a domino on the board which covers two adjacent squares that are free (not yet occupied by a domino), vertically or horizontally. The first player who cannot place a domino any more loses.

a) Who will win in 3x3 dominos?
b) Who will win in m x n dominos when both m and n are even?
c) Who will win in m x n dominos when m is odd and n is even?
Justify your answers.

a) Player two.
b) Player two.
c) Player one.

I'm nearly sure that those answers are all correct. The problem lies in the justification. What the hell does that mean? For example, with part b, can I just show a 2x2 game in which player two is obviously winning then just say that increasing to 4x4 simply increases the amount of 2x2 blocks? I mean I think that's what the guy was getting at with his G+Z"="G or (G+H)+K"="G+(H+K). The problem is I can't really wrap my mind around it (the proofs included), let alone be able to play the proper strategy just by thinking about the game. Like ya I can play optimal Nim now, but I sure as [censored] wouldn't have been able to figure it out in an exam setting.