Basic Information

  • Course Code: SC 631
  • Course Name: Games and Information
  • Course Offered In: 2023-2024
  • Semester Season: Spring
  • Instructors: Prof Ankur Kulkarni
  • Prerequisites: First year mathematics
  • Difficulty (1 being easy and 5 being tough): 4

Course Content

The content depends on the prof since the course size is fairly small but roughly this syllabus is followed:

  1. Axioms of game theory and simple non-cooperative games (prisoners’ dilemma)
  2. Dominance of strategies and Nash Equilibrium
  3. Aumann Model of Incomplete Information
  4. Aumann Model of Beliefs
  5. Mixed Strategies
  6. Dynamic Games
  7. Games with Communication

All these topics begin with an intuitive introduction (for example Incomplete Information is conveyed using a game of traffic lights where one player is colour-blind), however the course is mathematically rigorous and the professor doesn’t shy away from using computations to explain or reason things. Thus some of these topics may appear too dry towards the end.

Feedback on Lectures

Lectures were alright as the professor explained things quite extensively and had decent boardwork which allowed easy note taking. However the professor was deemed fast-paced by most of the students since he wouldn’t stop by during the statistical analysis parts of the topics to ensure that it was being grasped well by the students. No tutorial sessions as such but the lectures were interactive enough to make up for it. Attending the lectures was a must since if you missed anything it would be real hard to catch up as the prof didn’t share any lecture content or provided any reference books.

Feedback on Evaluations

Evaluation was based on take-home timed quizzes on MS teams (quite minimal weightage), a project presentation at the end of the course (fairly high weightage) and a written endsem examination (50% weightage). There were no other quizzes or midsem. Take-home quizzes were essentially exercise questions from some book the professor was referring to and while they were quite simple and based on in-class material, they sometimes contained errors. The eventual grading was fairly stringent, with BC being the median and mode grade to the best of my memory.

Study Material and Resources

Study material was quite a concern throughout the course as the only way to learn was through in-person lectures. No notes whatsoever, no slides (ofc), no reference books even despite us enquiring about the same. The only resource was personally taken lecture notes.

You can find my notes at: https://www.evernote.com/shard/s334/nl/242511982/d56b5147-387f-b749-0c84-565eaaad46b2?title=SC631:%20Games%20and%20Analysis however bear in mind that I stopped transcribing towards the end and I often took photos of the board which means some sections might be missing

Follow-up Courses

If you find this course interesting you can perhaps go ahead to take CS6001 by Prof Swaprava Nath, which is a more mathematical and concentrated Game Theory course, albeit also with better resources and easier to follow. An alternate (and better received) course on Game Theory itself is IE619 by Prof Urban Larsson, so can opt for that in place of SC631 (doing both would be redundant though).

Final Takeaway

Nice course, quite a lot to learn and enjoy but a difficult experience overall as it was always hard to follow once you lost track and there were no books or resources to study from (which is what i personally prefer). Worth taking if you’re willing to put in the effort.