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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Game Theory by Stanford University

4.6
stars
4,533 ratings

About the Course

Popularized by movies such as "A Beautiful Mind," game theory is the mathematical modeling of strategic interaction among rational (and irrational) agents. Beyond what we call `games' in common language, such as chess, poker, soccer, etc., it includes the modeling of conflict among nations, political campaigns, competition among firms, and trading behavior in markets such as the NYSE. How could you begin to model keyword auctions, and peer to peer file-sharing networks, without accounting for the incentives of the people using them? The course will provide the basics: representing games and strategies, the extensive form (which computer scientists call game trees), Bayesian games (modeling things like auctions), repeated and stochastic games, and more. We'll include a variety of examples including classic games and a few applications. You can find a full syllabus and description of the course here: http://web.stanford.edu/~jacksonm/GTOC-Syllabus.html There is also an advanced follow-up course to this one, for people already familiar with game theory: https://www.coursera.org/learn/gametheory2/ You can find an introductory video here: http://web.stanford.edu/~jacksonm/Intro_Networks.mp4...

Top reviews

SC

Feb 7, 2022

I would have preferred a more mathematically rigorous treatment of the subject. Nevertheless, this was a great course — the instructors expounded all concepts with exceptional clarity and engagement.

WY

May 16, 2017

Great ! Interesting and abound at the same time. Hope Professors will clarify the strategic utility function more clearly because it's hard for students with poor math basic(forget most><) right now!

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651 - 675 of 910 Reviews for Game Theory

By andriy n

Aug 21, 2017

The course indeed provides a really good glimpse on major topics in game theory. I found it to be quite fun introduction and it made reading on the topic much easier. What can be improved: some of explanations could have been made clearer (mostly in formulas and definitions where it is not clear what exact variable/letter means) and, of course, it is very frustrating when you see/hear errors (some of which are corrected, some not).

By Matija R

Oct 1, 2019

Very good introduction to Game Theory. Would recommend this course to both people in business trying to understand some basic math behind what happens in their business, as well as engineers who want to learn about core models of business.

Only downside are the tests that are a bit vague, and would recommend to restructure them in a way that helps course attendees to better grasp the models on which Game Theory is based.

By Nate H

Aug 30, 2020

Very interesting and informative. I wish the class was taught in more plain language and preferably with more real world/historical examples. The mathematical notation in many cases was unnecessarily complex for the level of difficulty of the problems themselves. I do understand that such notation would be necessary at higher levels of the topic, but it overcomplicated things in my perspective.

By Pooja I

Feb 27, 2019

It is a very interesting course. I never learned the concept earlier in college, as I come from communications background. The professors teach in an interactive way; this makes it easy for amateurs such as myself to pick up easily. But I do hope that in the coming weeks, the instructors also throw some light on its application in the field of social sciences in addition to mathematics part of it.

By Fred V

Jul 27, 2020

Extremely interesting course. It is, however, regrettable that the 3 speakers rushed the video talks, with some inaudible things, slips-of-tongue not corrected, noises of microphone, etc. There are also too many explanations on notations for not enough use of them. Some optional training exercises would have been welcome. However, the course goes a long way, from the start of games theory.

By Anurag B I

Jul 23, 2018

Excellent course! A wonderful experience and a lot of learning. Highly recommended. Also, no matter what your area of study is, this will definitely make you think differently. However the teaching during the week where the topic- Repeated Games was taught could have been better as it seemed very confusing because of the large formulae which may not be understood by a beginner.

By Hai L

Apr 4, 2022

Five stars for professor Jackson and Leyton-Brown, one star for Shoham. Shoham's lectures are so terrible which I cannot imagine. The contents, coherence and clartify are so bad in Shoham's lectures. If you have no willing to teach in opencourse, you can just quit, leaving so many terrible lectures to people who want to learn game theory is a unreasonble decesion.

By Gauri V

Dec 6, 2020

At times the course was confusing - perhaps this is due to the fact that I completed this course in the summer before year 13 and perhaps was a little younger than the target audience. However, overall the quality of the teaching was extremely high and I greatly enjoyed completing this course. The end of week quizzes were very helpful in consolidating knowledge.

By Sixiang C

Aug 25, 2017

Overall, this is a good course in basic game theory.

Pro: The notation and definition are rigorous. I think this course prepares you weel into the more advanced topics in Game theory.

Con: This course is defnintely not for non-math people. You need to have a certain degree of math sopistication.

And there are not many exampel and application of the game theory.

By Linda D

Jan 20, 2018

I enjoyed the lectures but would find it helpful to have a couple of questions to answer after each lecture.

I also would enjoy a Coursera course that concentrated specifically on Bayesian Theory and more of the practical games that it can reference also a short course specifically on betting strategies. Many thanks for introducing this course to a newbie!

By Virinchi V

Jun 12, 2018

The course was great and the videos were really helpful although some of them had technical mistakes.Few of the weekly assignments are very easy and I feel the final quiz didn't require to have the complete knowledge in par while attempting..I mean they could cover more topics as well.Overall this course helped learn a lot of things.Thanks to the team!

By Deleted A

Mar 24, 2020

The topic is fairly interesting though it's somehow difficult for beginners. However, Shoham's lectures really make me suffer, especially he didn't do enough explanation and expansion of the formula/equation, so I have to do the research myself, and this is super annoying as if you are a beginner cuz you don't even know what research you need to do.

By Satyajit G

Mar 20, 2018

It was a great experience getting to know what Game Theory is all about. It was very informative to learn about Nash Equilibrium and how it forms the basis of Game Theory. I found that some sections were rushed a bit and adequate in-class problem solving was missing. Also, I would have liked if there were a few more practice problems for every week.

By Brian J

Aug 9, 2020

Excellent introduction to many Game Theory topics. The varied instructors all had instructional cohesion but different styles that helped overall learning. There was some disconnect between the way material was taught and the way it was assessed, so more example problems or practice questions with feedback would be helpful to deepen understanding.

By Karlis S

Oct 27, 2020

The content was excellent but the presentation was shoddy. There were too many mistakes which should have been re-filmed, not corrected clumsily on the screen.

I also missed a tighter link between the theoretical lectures and practical exercises. On several occasions I had to consult other sources to be able to complete the practical assignments.

By Pradhyumn J

Apr 4, 2020

Great course with good teachers. You will definitely enjoy this if you are someone who enjoys logic and math, coupled with economics with real-life applications. There is some unnecessary computer science content, but that is not asked in the practice problems/tests. The best way to understand this course is by doing all the problems.

By Matthias G R

May 7, 2017

Entertaining course with good examples. Sometimes the questions could be solved without calculations and instead by heuristics. Other questions needed calculations as shown in the video material. You need some experience to math, but I like that the course focus more on the understanding of the various concepts. Thanks for the course.

By Parth S

Sep 17, 2018

This was a very interesting course. Even as you do not require any prior knowledge of game theory, you would still find it easier to follow if you have background in math, computation, and probability analysis. This course is a great way to learn decision theory, and the application of game theory analysis in the real world.

By Mokshlakshmi B

Feb 19, 2019

The content was excellent as far as the theory is concerned. It would have been helpful to link to some practical questions the kind of which were presented in the exam and reviews, to actually help apply those concepts. There was a certain disparity between the level of theoretical knowledge and the questions.

By Ana B

May 11, 2020

This was a great course! While I found the equations challenging at times due to my beginner's mathematical knowledge, the teachers did a great job at explaining them. As well, when we got the right answer, we were provided with an explanation, which was very useful. Would definitely recommend this course!

By Jan M S

May 29, 2020

Great introductory course on Game Theory that covers the basic elements. Interactive with games to play against other participants, quizzes and forum dicussions.

Only suggestion for improvement: Could use even more additional exercises, to really consolidate the newly gained knowledge.

By Joseph P W

Jan 27, 2020

The course was good. It was disorienting bouncing around between professors. I personally struggled greatly with this course because I struggle with mathematical equations, but I loved the real-world scenarios put forward in these games, particularly towards the end of the course.

By Yash G

Jul 5, 2019

The course took off at a nice pace to get grip on terms and lessons. Later on Bayesian games and coalitional Games, it was a bit quick to understand. Overall it is a good course to learn. Please add more practical session so we can identify the real world scenario in the future.

By Jyothi M

Jun 6, 2020

Being a new learner of game theory, it was a great learning experience with great teachers. stochastic games, Shapley values, and core were completely new areas to me. Mathematical aspect of game theory was tough. A little more detail of basic concepts of equations would help.

By L H

Apr 26, 2020

This course introduced many fascinating and exciting concepts! But the professors could have explained the concept more in depth with more examples, instead of focusing on merely formalising the definitions in mathematical notation when it does not add value to the lesson.