Evolution and Games: “How to quit the Price equation” “Evolution of Parochial Altruism by Multilevel Selection” “Sociality: It takes grouping and cooperation” “In and out of equilibrium: Evolution in repeated games” “Repeated games and population structure“
A Minor Post, Cooperation, Game Theory, Teaching ToolsIn the Fall of 2011 I began a new project with Greg Riestenberg, a graduate student in Pratt’s Communications Design program. Given the ubiquity — especially in recent times — of evolutionary game theory, you would think that someone would have produced a set of clear conceptual images depicting how the most important of these games work; Read More
Department of Mathematics & Science, Evolutionary Games Infographics, Game Theory, Information Design, Pratt Institute, Teaching, Teaching ToolsUPDATE: The images discussed below are now available for free use on the Evolutionary Games Infographic Project page. This post described earlier versions of our “conceptual” evolutionary games infographics for the Prisoner’s Dilemma, Stag Hunt, and Hawk-Dove games. The latest versions of these images are posted here. Below are galleries showing these earlier versions: You can browse Read More
Evolutionary Games Infographics, Game Theory, Information Design, Teaching ToolsWARNING: Unfortunately, the applets that I discuss below (“Otherwise”) no longer meet Java security specifications. As a result, they won’t work on computers with the most updated version of Java. Please see the other tools listed in the Comments section below as alternatives. I am still searching for the perfect user-friendly package to teach about Read More
Carrying Capacity, Ecological Modeling, Educational Software and Apps, Lesson Ideas, MSCI-270, Ecology, Population Growth, Teaching ToolsAfter a full semester of development, including a round of in-classroom testing with real live Pratt undergraduates, I am proud to announce the release of the Easy Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma (Easy-IPD) interface, a free web-based teaching tool that allows students to experiment with this influential model of behavior. You can check out a slideshow of Read More
Cooperation, Easy Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, Economics, Evolution Education, Game Theory, Lesson Ideas, Political Science, Reciprocity, Sociology, Teaching ToolsIn a recent posting I discussed the book The Evolution of Cooperation by Robert Axelrod [1, 2]. The book chronicles Axelrod’s work in the 1980’s to understand the dynamics of the Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma (IPD), which is perhaps the most well-known of game theory constructs. Axelrod’s work is important because it points out how rich Read More
Cooperation, Easy Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, Educational Software and Apps, Evolution Education, Evolutionary Modeling, Game Theory, Individual-based Models, Lesson Ideas, Reciprocity, Spatially Explicit Modeling, System Stability, Teaching, Teaching ToolsTechnically- and traditionally-speaking, an ecology course should not really deal too much with policy. A strict definition of ecology should limit the topic to the study of the interaction between organisms and their environment, and for decades now that has meant looking at how non-human animals and other organisms constitute ecosystems. Discussions of policy, economics, Read More
Anthropogenic Change, Biodiversity Loss, Climate Change, Ecological Footprinting, Ecology Education, Ecosystem Services, Environmental Justice, Ethics, MSCI-270, Ecology, Pollution, Public Policy, Quantitative Analysis, Sustainability, Teaching Tools, Web