Mathematics 167

Game Theory, Spring Quarter 2005

Time : MWF at 2:00
Place: MS 5147

Instructor: Thomas S. Ferguson

Office Hours: M 3, Th 2, and by Appointment
Office : MS 6129
e-mail: tom@math.ucla.edu

Teaching Assistant: Paul Bunn

Discussion Section: Tu 2, MS 5147

Office Hours: Th 9, Th 11:30, and by Appointment
Office: MS 3903

Text: Electronic Text on Game Theory on the web.

Homework Assignments.

Homework will be assigned each class and will be due the following class. Solutions will be posted after the assignments are collected. Late homework will not be graded. Instead, the reader will mark it late after scanning the submission to see it is complete. At the end of the quarter, late homework will be given half credit based on the total score of the graded homework. Please use standard 8 1/2 by 11 paper for your homework. Staples are much preferred to paper clips for holding the pages together.

Friday April 29
Friday May 20

Tuesday June 14, 8:00-11:00. To obtain an early report of your grade, leave a stamped, self-addressed postcard with your final exam or in the instructor's mailbox.

Grading will be based on homework, the two midterm examinations and the final examination. Homework will be worth about half a midterm, and each midterm will be worth about half the final. Thus, homework will count about 1/9th of the grade, each midterm about 2/9th, and the final about 4/9th. A student who misses a midterm exam will be graded on the basis of the homework and the other exams providing (i) the student has an ironclad excuse (such as medical emergency), and (ii) the student contacts the instructor on or before the day of the exam to arrange a conference. A student who misses the final exam may receive an incomplete (I) grade providing (i) the student has taken and passed both midterm exams, (ii) the student has completed the homework at a passing level, (iii) the student has an ironclad excuse, and (iv) the student contacts the instructor on or before the day of the final exam to arrange make arrangements.

The notes for the course are in electronic form in PDF. To read the notes, you will need the Adobe Acrobat Reader for your platform. This software can be downloaded free of charge from the Adobe website at
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readermain.html.

After the brief overview presented in the Introduction, we will cover
the first four sections of Part I,
the first five sections of Part II,
Appendix 1 on Utility Theory
all four sections of Part III, and
all four sections of Part IV.


If you want to find the solution to a matrix game and are willing to type in or paste in the matrix, try the Matrix Game Solver.

Associated Games.

A few games written in JavaScript to accompany the text may be found in JavaScript Games.