UGEB2530A Games and Strategic Thinking, 2012-13

Announcement

• Report guideline [Download file]
• Group number and presentation schedule [Download file]
• Please hand in the assignments before 6 p.m. on the due days into the assignment box labelled as UGEB2530 located on the 2nd floor in the Lady Shaw Building. Many thanks for your cooperation.
• Quiz 2 on 14/3 will be cancelled.
• One assignment 3, which is handed in before Monday morning, is without any information about its maker. Please let the tutor know who it belongs to. [Download file]
• The deadline of submitting the group report is postponed to 9 May (Thur). You may submit the report to the lecturer, the teaching assistant or put it in the assignment box.

General Information

Course Description

From the simple ``scissors, paper, and stone" game to the complex buy-and-sell financial decisions, we encounter games in our everyday life. While you are trying to figure out what your opponents are doing, they are trying to figure out what you are doing too. To maximize your outcome, you may want to cooperate or compete with all or some of them. Game theory is a way to analyze what rational people like you and me should do under these circumstances, and what the expected outcome will be if optimal strategies are followed.

The aim of this course is to provide students with a non-technical exploration of game theory. Required background in mathematics are addition, subtraction, and multiplication. (Well, we may need few divisions somewhere in the course though.) Required materials in mathematics will then be covered in the beginning of the course.

We will start with very simple parlor games to more realistic problems in economics, social psychology, biology, and business, where optimal strategies that are against intuition will be epitomized. In particular, the celebrated "Nash equilibrium" glossed over by Russell Crowe in the movie "A Beautiful Mind" will be explained in full detail in simple mathematical terms.

Textbooks

• Philip D. Straffin: Game Theory and Strategy, Mathematical Association of America, 1993.

References

• Peter Morris: Introduction to game theory, Springer-Verlag, 1994.
• Martin J. Osborne: An introduction to game theory, 2003. t http://www.economics.utoronto.ca/osborne/igt/index.html
• Avinash K. Dixit and Susan Skeath: Games of Strategy, 2004.
• Roy Gardner, Hoboken, NJ: Games for business and economics, c2003.
• Ken Binmore: Fun and Games - A Text on Game Theory, 1992.

Lecture Notes

• Lecture notes
• Introduction
• Matrices and Probability (Revised 1 Feb)
• Zer-sum game (Revised 21 Feb)
• Sequential games (Revised 7 March)
• Non-zero sum game
• Cooperative game

Assignments

• Assignment 1 (Due: 21 Feb (Thur))
• Assignment 2 (Due: 14 Mar (Thur))
• Assignment 3 (Due: 8 Apr (Mon))

Quizzes and Exams

• Quiz 1
• Quiz 2

Solutions

• Solution to Assignment 1
• Solution to Quiz 1
• Solution to Assignment 2 (10 am, 0315, uploaded)
• Solution to Assignment 3 (3 pm, 0409, uploaded)
• Solution to Quiz 2

Assessment Scheme

Honesty in Academic Work

The Chinese University of Hong Kong places very high importance on honesty in academic work submitted by students, and adopts a policy of zero tolerance on cheating and plagiarism. Any related offence will lead to disciplinary action including termination of studies at the University. Although cases of cheating or plagiarism are rare at the University, everyone should make himself / herself familiar with the content of the following website:

and thereby help avoid any practice that would not be acceptable.