Events Calendar

Empirical Game-Theoretic Analysis for Practical Strategic Reasoning

Speaker: Michael Wellman (University of Michigan)Host: Prof.Milind TambeAbstract:
The games agents play--in markets, conflicts, or most other contexts--often defy strict game-theoretic analysis. Games may be unmanageably large (combinatorial or infinite state or action spaces), and present severely imperfect information, which could be further complicated by partial dynamic revelation. Moreover, the game may be specified procedurally, for instance by a simulator, rather than in an explicit game form.With colleagues and students over the past few years, I have been developing a body of techniques for strategic analysis, adopting the game-theoretic framework but employing it in domains where direct "model-and-solve" cannot apply. This empirical game-theoretic methodology embraces simulation, approximation, statistics and learning, and search. Applications to canonical market games, for example, yields improved bidding strategies for simultaneous ascending auctions and continuous double auctions. Simulation-based studies of rich trading scenarios further demonstrate the value of empirical methods for extending the scope of game-theoretic analysis.Brief bio:
Michael Wellman received a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1988 for his work in qualitative probabilistic reasoning and decision-theoretic planning. From 1988 to 1992, Wellman conducted research in these areas at the USAF's Wright Laboratory. For the past 15+ years, his research has focused on computational market mechanisms for distributed decision making and electronic commerce. As Chief Market Technologist for TradingDynamics, Inc. (now part of Ariba), he designed configurable auction technology for dynamic business-to-business commerce. Wellman previously served as Chair of the ACM Special Interest Group on Electronic Commerce (SIGecom), and as Executive Editor of the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research. He is a Fellow of theAssociation for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence and the Association for Computing Machinery.

Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

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