CS 1699 / CS 3150 Fall 2014
Title: Networks,
Crowds and Markets
Corporate
Email Communication
Network
High School Dating
Network
Prediction Market for 2008
Presidential Election
Trails of Flikr
Users in Manhattan
Instructor: Kirk
Pruhs
Email:
kirk@cs.pitt.edu
Phone
: 412-624-8844
Course
Description
The plan is to cover essentially all of the text
Networks, Crowds, and Markets: Reasoning About a Highly Connected
World By David Easley and Jon Kleinberg. The text was the
winner of the 2011 Fredrick W. Lanchester Prize for the best
contribution to operations research and the management sciences
published in English. Much of the text is targeted at a more general
audience than upper level mathematical science sstudents, so we will
cover the advanced portions of the text, as well as
potentially some supplemental material. The blurb from the web
site:
In recent
years there has been a growing public fascination with the
complex "connectedness" of modern society. This
connectedness is found in many incarnations: in the rapid
growth of the Internet and the Web, in the ease with which
global communication now takes place, and in the ability of
news and information as well as epidemics and financial
crises to spread around the world with surprising speed and
intensity. These are phenomena that involve networks,
incentives, and the aggregate behavior of groups of people;
they are based on the links that connect us and the ways in
which each of our decisions can have subtle consequences for
the outcomes of everyone else.
Networks, Crowds, and Markets combines different
scientific perspectives in its approach to understanding
networks and behavior. Drawing on ideas from economics,
sociology, computing and information science, and applied
mathematics, it describes the emerging field of study that
is growing at the interface of all these areas, addressing
fundamental questions about how the social, economic, and
technological worlds are connected.
Syllabus
Prerequisites:
Technically, the
prerequisite is consent of the instructor. Ideally I would like
students to have done reasonably well (say a grade of B or
better) in CS 1502 or some class involving mathematical proofs,
and who are enthusiastic about learning. If you would like
permission to register for the course, send me an email with:
- A statement that
you wish to register for the class
- A copy of your
academic transcript. An informal version from my.pitt.edu is
fine.
- If you are not a
computer science student, some explanation of your
background/training in doing mathematical proofs
- A brief (a few
sentences) statement of why you want to take the class, and
what you hope to gain from the class
Schedule:
- Monday
August 25 (Class 1):
- Read
chapter 1. Quiz at the start of class.
- Lecture:
Standard game theory solution concepts
- Wednesday
August 27 (Class 2):
- Read
chapter 2 and chapter 6. Quiz at the start of class,
which will concentrate on the advanced material
section.
- Homework:
Chapter 6, problems 1, 2, and 6.
- Lecture:Proof
of existence of (mixed) Nash Equilibrium via
Brouwer's fixed point and Sperner's lemmas (source). End-of-line
and PPAD-completeness. Approximate Nash
in PPAD.
- Friday
August 29 (Class 3)
- Read
chapter 3. Quiz covering this at the start of
class. Skim overview
of PPAD-completeness of Nash.
- Join
the Google group
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/pitt_cs_1699_fall2014
- Homework:
Chapter 2 problem 2. Chapter 6 problem 15.
- Start
perusing papers from the ACM Conference on
Economics and Computation (EC) in 2014,
2013
and 2012.
Your goal is to find a few theoretically oriented
papers (with nontrivial proofs) that are related to
the course and that you find interesting. Post your
first choice of paper to give a talk on to https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/pitt_cs_1699_fall2014
(which you will
have to join). Include the following information: title,
authors, and abstract (which all should be cut and
paste), (If you don't think the abstract is
sufficiently descriptive) another paragraph
elaborating on the contributions of the paper, a
paragraph explaining what you think the paper is
interesting, and a one sentence statement of what
you think the take away message is for the paper.
Before you post, check that no one else has
picked that paper. So first come first served.
- Lecture:
NP-hardness
of 2-Nash (Source). Hints of
the proof of PPAD-hardness
of Nash.
- Wednesday
September 3 (Class 4)
- Read
chapter 7. Quiz
covering this at the start of class.
- Homework:
chapter 3 problem 5.
- Lecture:
Evolutionary stable strategies using the Hawk-Dove
game as a running example
- Friday
September 5 (Class 5):
- Read
chapter 4 and chapter 8 except for the advanced
material section. Quiz covering this at the
start of class. Skim the advanced material section.
- Homework:
chapter 7 problems 3 and 4.
- Lecture:
Advanced material section of chapter 8. 4/3 bound on
the price of anarchy. Primary
Source. Secondary
source and example of what slides for a talk
in this area might look like.
- Monday
September 8 (Class 6):
- Read
chapter 5 except for the advanced material section.
Quiz covering this at the start of class. Skim
the advanced material section.
- Homework:
Chapter 4 problem 4. Chapter 8 problem 4.
- Lecture:
Advanced material section of chapter 5
- Wednesday
September 10 (Class 7):
- Read
chapter 9 except for the advanced material section.
Quiz covering this at the start of class. Skim
the advanced material section.
- Homework:
Chapter 5 problem 4.
- Deadline
for picking first EC paper to speak about.
- Lecture:
Advanced material from chapter 9
- Friday
September 12 (Class 8)
- Read
Chapter 10 up through section 10.3. Quiz
covering this at the start of class. Skim
chapter 10.4.
- Homework:
Chapter 9 problem 11. Give a formal proof for part b
if you can reasonably do so.
- Lecture:
Section 10.4, an algorithm for constructing market
clearing pricing
- Monday
September 15 (Class 9)
- Read
Chapter 11.
Quiz covering this at the start of class.
- Homework:
Chapter 10 problem 15
- Deadline
for picking second EC paper to speaker about. Post
your choice of paper to give a talk on to https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/pitt_cs_1699_fall2014
(which you will
have to join). Include the following information: title,
authors, and abstract (which all should be cut and
paste), (If you don't think the abstract is
sufficiently descriptive) another paragraph
elaborating on the contributions of the paper, a
paragraph explaining what you think the paper is
interesting, and a one sentence statement of what
you think the take away message is for the paper.
Before you post, check that no one else has
picked that paper. So first come first served.
- Lecture:
Finding market clearing prices via convex
programming (source).
Top trading cycle one sided preference algorithm and
Gale-Shapley two sided preference matching algorithm
(notes)
- Wednesday
September 17 (Class 10)
- Read
Chapter 12 except for advanced material section. Quiz
covering this at the start of class. Skim the
advanced material section.
- Homework:
Chapter 11 problem 7
- Lecture:
Advanced material section: A game-theoretic
derivation of the Nash-bargaining solution
- Friday
September 19 (Class 11)
- Read
Chapter 13, and Chapter 14, except for the advanced
material section of chapter 14. Quiz
covering this at the start of class. Skim the
advanced material section.
- Homework:
Chapter 12 problem 6
- Lecture:
Advanced material section of chapter 14: spectral
analysis of Hubs and Authorities and Pagerank, and
relation of Pagerank to random walks
- Monday
September 22 (Class 12)
- Read
Chapter 15 sections 1 and 2. Quiz covering this at
the start of class. Skim sections 3 and 4.
- Homework:
Chapter 13 problem 1. Chapter 14 problem 6.
- Deadline
for preparation of presentation (powerpoint or
whatever) of your first 25 minute talk
- Lecture:
Sections 3 and 4: VCG and proof that it is a
truthful for combinatorial auctions. LOS mechanism,
greedy approximation algorithm for assignment, and
truthful analysis, for single-minded bidders
combinatorial auctions (notes
I believe originally from Tim Roughgarden).
- Wednesday
September 24 (Class 13)
- Read
Chapter 15 sections 5 to 8. Quiz
covering this at the start of class. Skim the
advanced material section.
- Homework:
Chapter 15 problem 5
- Lecture:
Advanced material section of chapter 15: proof VCG
gives market clearing prices
- Friday
September 26 (Class 14)
- Read
Chapter 17 through section 17.5. Quiz covering this
at the start of class. Skim chapter 16.
- Homework:
Chapter 15 problem 6
- Lecture:
Chapter 16 on Information cascades and Bayes rule
- Monday
September 29 (Class 15)
- Read
Chapter 18 except for advanced material section. Quiz
covering this at the start of class. Skim the
advanced material section.
- Homework:
Chapter 17 problem 4.
- Lecture:
Advanced material section: Analysis of
rich-get-richer process
- Wednesday
October 1 (Class 16)
- Read
Chapter 19 except for advanced material
section. Quiz covering this at the start of
class. Skim the advanced material section.
- Homework:
Chapter 16 problem 6. Chapter 18 problem 1
- Lecture:
Advanced material section. Analysis of cascade
capacity
- Friday
October 3 (Class 17)
- Read
Chapter 20 except for advanced material
section. Quiz covering this at the start of
class. Skim the advanced material section.
- Homework:
Chapter 19 problem 7
- Lecture:
Advanced material section. Analysis of decentralized
search
- Monday
October 6 (Class 18)
- Read
Chapter 21 except for advanced material
section. Quiz covering this at the start of
class. Skim the advanced material section.
- Deadline
for preparation of presentation (powerpoint or
whatever) of your second 25 minute talk
- Homework:
Chapter 20 problem 3
- Lecture:
Advanced material section, analysis of branching and
coalescent processes
- Wednesday
October 8 (Class 19)
- Read
Chapter 22 except for advanced material
section. Quiz covering this at the start of
class. Skim the advanced material section.
- Homework:
Chapter 21 problem 3
- Lecture:
Advanced material section, wealth dynamics in
markets
- Friday
October 10 (Class 20)
- Read
Chapter 23 up through section 23.6 inclusive.
Quiz covering this at the start of class. Skim
the advanced material section.
- Homework:
Chapter 22 problem 7
- Lecture:
Advanced material section. proof of Arrow's
impossibility theorem
- Tuesday
October 14 (Class 21)
- Read
Chapter 23 from 23.7 through 23.10 inclusive.
Chapter 24. Quiz covering this at the start of
class.
- Homework:
Chapter 23 problem 3. Chapter 24 problem 2.
- Lecture:
Statement and proof of Gibbard-Satterthwaite
theorem (source)
- Wednesday
October 15 (No class)
- Friday
October 17 (No class)
- Monday
October 20 (Class 22)
- Wednesday
October 22 (Class 23)
- Salim's
talk
- Vineet's
talk
- Friday
October 24 (Class 24)
- Monday
October 27 (Class 25)
- Wednesday
October 29 (Class 26)
- Salim's
talk
- Vineet's
talk
- Friday
October 31
- Monday
November 3 (Class 27)