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SUNMONTUEWEDTHUFRISAT
Events for November 16, 2010
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GTHB Seminar
Tue, Nov 16, 2010 @ 12:00 PM - 02:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Tim Roughgarden, Stanford University
Talk Title: Intrinsic Robustness of the Price of Anarchy
Abstract: The price of anarchy is a measure of the inefficiency of selfish behavior that has been successfully analyzed in many applications, including network routing, resource allocation, network formation, and even models of basketball. It is defined as the worst-case ratio between the welfare of a Nash equilibrium and that of an optimal (first-best) solution. Seemingly, a bound on the price of anarchy is meaningful only if players successfully reach some Nash equilibrium. Our main result is that for many of the classes of games in which the price of anarchy has been studied, results are "intrinsically robust" in the following sense: a bound on the worst-case price of anarchy for pure Nash equilibria *necessarily* implies the exact same worst-case bound for a much larger sets of outcomes, including mixed Nash equilibria, correlated equilibria, and sequences of outcomes generated by natural experimentation strategies (such as successive best responses or simultaneous regret-minimization).
Biography: Tim Roughgarden received his PhD from Cornell University in 2002 and joined the Stanford CS faculty in 2004. His research interests lie in theoretical computer science, especially its interfaces with game theory and networks. He wrote the book "Selfish Routing and the Price of Anarchy" (MIT Press, 2005) and co-edited the book "Algorithmic Game Theory", with Nisan, Tardos, and Vazirani (Cambridge, 2007). His significant awards include the 2002 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award (Honorable Mention), the 2003 Tucker Prize, the 2003 INFORMS Optimization Prize for Young Researchers, speaking at the 2006 International Congress of Mathematicians, a 2007 PECASE Award, the 2008 Shapley Lectureship of the Game Theory Society, and the 2009 ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award.
Host: GTHB
Location: James H. Zumberge Hall Of Science (ZHS) - 159
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Kanak Agrawal
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College Commons Panel Discussion
Tue, Nov 16, 2010 @ 04:00 PM - 06:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Sharon Swartz (Evolutionary Biology, Brown University), Akira Lippit (Cinema USC), and Michael Arbib (Computer Science and Neuroscience, USC) , Brown University & USC
Talk Title: Thinking With/As Animals
Abstract: When bees dance, when birds and whales sing and when bats echolocate, how close do these communicative methods come to what we call âlanguageâ? Furthermore, within evolutionary processes, how do manual gestures among humans become speech and how does a leg, in the case of the bat, become a wing? What essential changes to the nature of the human or the animal are signified by speech and flight? And how do we represent the relations between humans and animals in terms of choreographies of the gaze? Why and when do animals look at humans? What do they see when they do look? And how are human and animal gazes the same or different?
In a wide-ranging and dynamic panel discussion between Sharon Swartz (Evolutionary Biology, Brown University), Akira Lippit (Cinema USC), and Michael Arbib (Computer Science and Neuroscience, USC) we will engage these questions and more about the differences and similarities between animals and humans.
To secure your spot please RSVP to: tcc@college.usc.edu
Part IV of a Series of V: THE HUMAN-ANIMAL DIVIDE
Host: College Commons
Location: Edward L. Doheny Jr. Memorial Library (DML) - 240
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Kanak Agrawal
