Game Theory

Coursera Game Theory

Platform
Coursera
Provider
Stanford University, The University of British Columbia
Effort
5-7 hours/week
Length
8 weeks
Language
English
Credentials
Paid Certificate Available
Course Link
Overview
Popularized by movies such as "A Beautiful Mind," game theory is the mathematical modeling of strategic interaction among rational (and irrational) agents. Beyond what we call `games' in common language, such as chess, poker, soccer, etc., it includes the modeling of conflict among nations, political campaigns, competition among firms, and trading behavior in markets such as the NYSE. How could you begin to model keyword auctions, and peer to peer file-sharing networks, without accounting for the incentives of the people using them? The course will provide the basics: representing games and strategies, the extensive form (which computer scientists call game trees), Bayesian games (modeling things like auctions), repeated and stochastic games, and more. We'll include a variety of examples including classic games and a few applications.

You can find a full syllabus and description of the course here: http://web.stanford.edu/~jacksonm/GTOC-Syllabus.html

There is also an advanced follow-up course to this one, for people already familiar with game theory: Game Theory II: Advanced Applications | Coursera

Syllabus
WEEK 1
Week 1: Introduction and Overview

Introduction, overview, uses of game theory, some applications and examples, and formal definitions of: the normal form, payoffs, strategies, pure strategy Nash equilibrium, dominant strategies

WEEK 2
Week 2: Mixed-Strategy Nash Equilibrium

pure and mixed strategy Nash equilibria

WEEK 3
Week 3: Alternate Solution Concepts

Iterative removal of strictly dominated strategies, minimax strategies and the minimax theorem for zero-sum game, correlated equilibria

WEEK 4
Week 4: Extensive-Form Games

Perfect information games: trees, players assigned to nodes, payoffs, backward Induction, subgame perfect equilibrium, introduction to imperfect-information games, mixed versus behavioral strategies.

WEEK 6
Week 6: Bayesian Games

General definitions, ex ante/interim Bayesian Nash equilibrium.

WEEK 7
Week 7: Coalitional Games

Transferable utility cooperative games, Shapley value, Core, applications.

WEEK 8
Week 8: Final Exam

Taught by
Matthew O. Jackson and Yoav Shoham
Author
Coursera
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