While most reading for the course will involve research papers, there are
two useful texts that will provide relevant background:
- The primary text is
Multiagent Systems: Algorithmic,
Game-Theoretic, and Logical Foundations by Yoav Shoham and Kevin
Leyton-Brown (Cambridge University Press, 2009). It is
freely available online (with suggested limitations on its use).
Chapters 3, 5, 6, 9 and 10 will provide useful background for the
second half of the course. It is referred to as MASAGLF below.
- An useful background reference for certain parts of the
course (especially for those without significant AI background)
is Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, by Stuart Russell
and Peter Norvig (Prentice-Hall, 1995). This is a comprehensive text with
reasonably concise, very readable, well-motivated chapters on several of
the topics we will discuss. I'll refer to sections from AIMA
as background reading on probabilistic inference and decision theory.
Not a necessary reference (since lectures will be self-contained on these
topics), but potentially useful. I'll make available several copies
of the text.
Here are a few more general background readings
that you can use for specific aspects of the course.
Class Schedule (with Readings and Lecture Slides)
Readings for
specific classes will be usually be posted here a couple weeks before class.
Occasionally some supplemental readings will be added after the class.
Some readings will not be available online: as appropriate, I will make
hardcopy available for copying. Lecture slides for lecture-oriented
classes will be posted immediately after class.
This is a tentative schedule for the first few weeks. We may adjust things
depending on the interests of the class.
- Sep.09, 2014: Introduction; Basic Probabilistic Inference;
Brief Intro to Bayesian Networks
Note: if there's a need, we will schedule a 1 hour tutorial to complete the review of
inference in Bayesian networks.
Readings:
Notes and Slides:
Lecture 1 Slides
- Sep.16, 2014: Foundations of Decision Theory
Readings:
Notes and Slides:
Lecture 2 Slides
- Sep.23, 2014: Preference Elicitation
Readings:
Notes and Slides:
Lecture 3 Slides :
Please note that we did not cover the readings completely today, so we will discuss them
at the beginning of the next class.
- Sep.30, 2014: Sequential Decision Making:
Markov Decision Processes
Readings:
Notes and Slides:
Lecture 4 Slides
- Oct.7, 2014: Sequential Decision Making: Partially observable MDPs
Readings:
Notes and Slides:
Lecture 5 Slides
- Oct.14, 2014: Factored Models and Approximation of MDPs and POMDPs
Readings:
Notes and Slides:
Lecture 6 Slides
- Oct.21, 2014: Intro to Reinforcement Learning
Readings:
Notes and Slides:
Lecture 7 Slides
- Oct.28, 2014: Elements of Game Theory
Readings:
Notes and Slides:
Lecture 8 Slides
- Nov.04, 2014: Mechanism Design and Auction Theory
Readings:
Notes and Slides:
Lecture 9 Slides
(see also the last part of last week's slides on imperfect info, repeated and Markov games).
- Nov.11, 2014: Topics in Mechanism Design
Readings:
Notes and Slides:
Lecture 10 Slides
(overlaps with the last part of last week's slides on mechanism design).
- Nov.18, 2014: Fall Reading Break.
- Nov.25, 2014: Elements of Social Choice
Readings:
Notes and Slides:
Lecture 11 Slides
- Dec.02, 2014: Topics in Social Choice
Readings:
Notes and Slides:
TBA