Month: November 2022

Introduction – definition of Evolutionary Game Theory First, let’s take a high-level overview of what Evolutionary Game Theory is. Based on our understanding of classic game theory, we give Evolutionary Game Theory a definition similar to the classic one. The difference about Evolutionary game theory is that it involves the dynamics of the strategy changes […]

Introduction and background The transportation services between cities are usually carried by road or railway operators. In the situation that the routes are parallel, which means the passenger can choose one option from either road or railway transportation when planning the trip, the different operators are in a competitive situation for attracting passengers. However, if […]

Background “Game theory”, while it sounds like it has a direct connection to games, is counter-intuitive in that it has no direct connection to video games as we know them. In a formal interpretation, game theory is a branch of applied mathematics that provides tools for analyzing situations in which parties make interdependent decisions. However […]

  Can Game Theory be Applied to Evolution?   Introduction Throughout this course we’ve explored many topics directly and indirectly related to game theory, trying to find different fields where game theory can either be applied for efficiency, or theorizing how game theory could have been applied to find a better or more efficient solution. […]

Introduction Society is governed by morals. For humans to live together in an orderly and peaceful manner, morals form a set of ‘rules’ that promote the wellbeing of the collective over the interests of the individual. For example, behaviour like theft is widely considered immoral, even though it is self-benefiting for the thief. But what […]

Introduction Over the past couple of years, COVID-19 has rampaged its way through the world. In this blog post I wish to analyze COVID-19 as a contagion network, and use that to explain why its growth was linear in 2020. Motivation We discussed epidemics and contagion networks in class on week 11, and COVID-19 has […]

Introduction We are now approaching the tail-end of the covid-19 pandemic (at least I hope we are), and looking back on the experiences of the last 2 years I can safely summarize this era in my life as – confusing. The environment during the pandemic marked some of the most chaotic moments in recent history; […]

Introduction: There are many game theory contexts and applications in our daily life. Under the assumption that everyone is rational, we use game theory to predict others’ actions and make corresponding strategies on our own. From time to time, I think about whether there are rational creatures other than humans that utilize game theory or […]

Younger ravens usually search for carcasses independently. Once they find one, they recruit other young ravens to prevent the carcass from being taken from pairs of adults. Interestingly, at a raven roost located at Anglesey, the younger ravens search in groups. At the time, ravens were not previously seen to work together this closely. In […]

Introduction As modern technology continues to advance, Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be found almost anywhere and everywhere. Recall the last interaction you may have had with an AI. It could be a sales bot recommending products or a GPS system providing you with routes to your destination. Regardless of the context, as a user, it […]

Introduction What is Ebola ? Ebola is a deadly, but rare, disease in people and nonhuman primates. The viruses that cause Ebola are located mainly in sub-Saharan Africa. People can get it through physical contact with an infected primate or a sick or dead person infected with Ebola virus. The index patient of Ebola was […]

Introduction Networks, or graphs, are used as a way to visualize existing information. We create networks to hold a product recommendation system, to visualize interbank loans, or show links between political blogs. There are many instances, like the ones mentioned, where we gain much more insight by taking the sensible approach of using networks in […]

Introduction From buying stocks to getting vaccinated or even crossing the street, people rely greatly on others to help make their decisions. In all these examples, people decide sequentially which will indefinitely lead to information cascades. I am going to dive a little deeper into this concept and look at some of the intricacies of […]

Game Theory in Among Us Introduction: When we started talking about game theory, my first though was how do i weaponize this knowledge to absolutely demolish my friends at social deception games. The classic simple social deception game is mafia/werewolf. This form of game recently got popularized by Among Us, a game by Innersloth that […]

Introduction Fighting games provide a fantastic framework for exploring Game Theory as interactions between player options have a very clear payoff structure in terms of damage dealt to the players. Moment to moment, players make several offensive and defensive options, each of which have counterplay which may or may not be situational. Lagang (2019) explores […]

In class we learned about game theory, which is ultimately used to study the behavior of rational individuals’ interactions in a given environment. As in the name, the individuals and their interactions are depicted as a game model. The individuals are the players of the game. Each individual has a set of actions or strategies […]

Introduction Who would have thought that China, the 2nd largest economy of the world, has faced a lot of issues with its modern estate industry and the tool that the people in the industry use to tackle this problem is the very thing we have learned in CSCC46—Game Theory. This study conducted by Rongyi Lai […]

In the past few years, there has been intense competition and rapid innovation between Tesla, Google, and Uber to see who can create the first practical self-driving car. Each company has extensive applications for the use of self-driving cars. To name a few, Google could use self-driving cars for expanding Google maps street view, Uber […]

Introduction When it comes to racing, and especially cycling, there are two types of strategies; peloton and breakaway. The peloton refers to the center of the pack – a large group of cyclists that stay relatively close together to benefit from a slipstream. There are often cyclists that attack at the beginning of the race […]

Introduction The world cup just started and in light of that fact I decided to find an article that applies game theory to football/soccer. For the rest of the blog post I will be referring to the sport as soccer, only because the article I have chosen is doing that (please don’t get mad at […]

Overwatch is an online shooting game that focuses largely on team cooperation. Unlike other games where each player is somewhat independent and the strength of the team is roughly equal to the sum of the strength of all individual players, Overwatch is a game that demonstrates good strategy, planning and cooperation are far more important […]

Introduction Ever wonder how cyber attacks are planned and executed against the world’s largest companies? It’s not as simple as a genius 15-year old hacking into a company’s infrastructure within an hour. There are constant small targeted attacks against networks which may succeed or fail, depending on how well IT Engineers have secured their networks. […]

Introduction During the previous bull run of cryptocurrency, I was able to make use of a couple of my old graphics cards to mine cryptocurrency and was able to make a few extra hundred dollars a month. With the underlying knowledge I gained while mining about how the bitcoin mining process works, it becomes clear […]

Introduction As we all know, the World Cup started a few days ago. Many of us are supporting either our home countries, or have some sort of allegiance to one of the countries competing in the World Cup (Go Team Canada!). Soccer is a game that relies heavily on the skill of 11 players. If […]

Introduction The Stock market has become much more accessible for small investors through the emergence of online trading. Investors use brokerage firms to purchase quantities of a single stock. There are some brokerage firms that provide little to no investment advice to the investor allowing for their own investment strategies, whereas other brokerage firms provide […]

Often times in professional sports with two competing teams, “regulation time” is not satisfactory for determining a victorious team. This occurs when both sports teams are tied by the end of the game’s scheduled duration. There are several ways to handle such an outcome – some sports deem these as ties, and other sports add […]

Deadlock Dilemma Similar to the Prisoners Dilemma, there is another commonly scenario known as “Deadlock”. First created by William Pounderstone, this social dilemma while similar to the commonly known Prisoner Dilemma adds on a new concept that changes it from being the same scenario. Description In this social dilemma, there are 2 players. Each one […]

Ever heard of The Hunger Games? Here’s what it’s about: there are 12 districts in a city and two contestants from each district are randomly chosen to participate in the annual hunger games. The goal of the hunger games: kill the other contestants and live till the end to win. A bit brutal, I know. […]

One of the most dangerous parts of living in a city, especially one with a large amount of both vehicle and pedestrian traffic is driving and crossing the roads. Due to this, we have many experts of the city carefully, and after much deliberation with each other come up with road laws that are implemented […]

Introduction Social influence is everywhere in our society and whether we want to admit or not, the way information is presented to us has a great influence on how we perceive a person, a product, or the world. The politician who wants our vote, the salesman who wants us to buy their products, social media […]