Math 210 schedule
| Tuesday |
Thursday |
Jan. 9
No class
| Jan. 11
In Lecture:
- Overview of the course
- Two person games and the media: Why is lying on the rise?
- Strategies in two person games
Associated Reading:
- On Bullshit (entire book)
- FAPP = For all Practical Purposes, Chapter 15.1
- How math can save your life, chapter 2.
- Pages 736-739 of Raghavan's article on zero sum two person games
Homework:
A nice example of B.S.
Video of class (downloadable)
|
Jan. 16
In Lecture:
- B.S. versus lying, examples from the news.
- Two person zero sum games, continued. Examples involving credibility and the lying benefit.
Associated Reading:
- On Bullshit (entire book)
- FAPP = For all Practical Purposes, Chapter 15.1
- How math can save your life, chapter 2.
- Pages 736-739 of Raghavan's article on zero sum two person games
Video of class (downloadable)
| Jan. 18
In Lecture:
- Recap of analysis of the truth versus lying game
- Why the lying benefit is necessary to explain speakers who always lie
- Extremism
- Multi-option, two person zero sum games
- Dominant strategies, maximins, minimaxes and saddlepoints
- Why speaking bullshit and expecting bullshit form a saddlepoint in the absence of credibility.
Associated Reading:
- On Bullshit (entire book)
- FAPP = For all Practical Purposes, Chapter 15.1
- How math can save your life, chapter 2.
- Pages 736-739 of Raghavan's article on zero sum two person games
Homework:
Video of class (downloadable)
|
Jan. 23
In Lecture:
- Proof that maximin <= minimax
- Proof that for a two person two option zero sum game, a dominant strategy exists if and only if there is a saddlepoint. This is not true of larger games.
- For arbitrary zero sum games, if there is a dominant strategy there is a saddlepoint.
Associated Reading:
- On Bullshit (entire book)
- FAPP = For all Practical Purposes, Chapter 15.1
- How math can save your life, chapter 2.
- Pages 736-739 of Raghavan's article on zero sum two person games
Homework:
Video of class (downloadable)
| Jan. 25
In Lecture:
- Proof of the recipe for finding optimal strategies in a two-person two-option zero sum game
Associated Reading:
- On Bullshit (entire book)
- FAPP = For all Practical Purposes, Chapter 15.1
- How math can save your life, chapter 2.
- Pages 736-739 of Raghavan's article on zero sum two person games
Video of class (downloadable)
|
Jan. 30
In Lecture:
- Three by three games
- The three planes arising from the rock paper scissors game. The
lower left corner is at the point (p_1,p_2,z) = (0,0,-1). The three planes are the graphs of the functions giving the expected payoff as a function of (p_1,p_2,1-p_1-p_2) played by player 1 against the three pure strategies of player 2.
Linear programming problems
Associated Reading:
- FAPP, Chapter 15.2
- How math can save your life, chapter 2
- Pages 736-739 of Raghavan's article on zero sum two person games
Video of class (downloadable)
Feb. 1
In Lecture:
- Linear programming problems: Real world examples.
- Statement of how optimal game theory strategies relate to linear programming
Associated Reading:
- FAPP, Chapter 15.2
- How math can save your life, chapter 2
- Pages 736-739 of Raghavan's article on zero sum two person games
- The part of this Wikipedia article on linear programming up to the section titled "Augmented form (slack form)".
Video of class (downloadable) - to be posted
| |
Feb. 6
No in class meeting today. Instead, please have a look at this Video (downloadable)
giving an example of how to find optimal strategies via linear programming and the use of vertices.
Associated Reading:
- Pages 736-739 of Raghavan's article on zero sum two person games
Note: Skype office hours will be at 10 p.m. tonight. Please send ted an e-mail if you could like to be part of these office hours.
| Feb. 8
No class: Cancelled due to the Eagles parade!
|
Feb. 13
In Lecture
|
Feb. 20
In Lecture
|
Feb. 27
In Lecture
|
March 13
In Lecture
|
March 20
In Lecture:
- Zombie epidemic models, continued
- Autonomous ordinary differential equations
Associated Reading:
Video of class (downloadable)
| March 22
In Lecture:
- Using matrix exponentials to find explicit solutions of autonomous systems of ordinary differential equations
- Stability and linear stability of ordinary differential equations
- Eigenvalues of matrices
Associated Reading:
Video of class (downloadable)
|
March 27
In Lecture:
- Jordan canonical forms and their exponentials
- Testing when two by two matrices have eigenvalues with negative real parts
- Equilibria of the updated zombie model
Associated Reading:
Video of class (downloadable)
| March 29
In Lecture:
- Stability analysis of the updated zombie model
Associated Reading:
Video of class (downloadable)
| April 3
In Lecture:
- Completion of the analysis of the updated zombie model
- Beginning of Probability theory
- Calculation of probabilities for finite sample spaces by counting and combinatorics
Associated Reading:
Video of class (downloadable)
| April 5
In Lecture:
- Using maple to plot vector fields
- Permuations and Combinations
- Multinomial theorem
- Sigma-algebras and the borel subsets of the real numbers
- Probability density functions
Associated Reading:
- FAPP, Chapters 8.1, 8.2
- How math can save your life, p. 47 - 50
Video of class (downloadable)
April 10
In Lecture:
- Review for the mid-term: Autonomous differential equations, stability and linear stability, modeling.
- Conditional probability
- Bayes theorem
- Updating prior estimates of probabilities using new observations
Associated Reading:
Video of class (downloadable)
| April 12
In Lecture:
| April 17
In Lecture:
- Independent events
- Random variables
- Density functions and distribution functions
- Expectations and standard deviations
- Constructing new random variables from old ones
Associated Reading:
- FAPP, Chapters 8.1, 8.2
- How math can save your life, p. 47 - 50
Video of class (downloadable)
April 19
In Lecture:
- Central limit theorem
- Poisson distributions
- Graph theory
Associated Reading:
- FAPP, Chapters 8.1, 8.2
- How math can save your life, p. 47 - 50
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