Associate Professor, Pratt Institute
Evolutionary Games Infographics
Table of Contents:
- Introduction
- Licensing and copyright
- Available infographics
- Community input
- Promote this project
- Support
Introduction:
The Evolutionary Games Infographic Project (EGIP) seeks to promote and improve the teaching of game theory by providing a diverse set of free graphic images for use in classrooms, on websites, and in other published work. Game theory has become an important and influential theoretical tool in economics, evolutionary biology, and political science, but most game theory teaching is aimed at more mathematically-inclined students. In initiating the EGIP, we asked the question “how can graphic design and other forms of visualization make game theory more widely accessible?”. We created these images to help teachers of game theory to provide better instruction and to help learners better understand game theory.
In the first phase of the project, we have tackled four important theoretical games that are important for understanding how cooperation evolves: the Prisoner’s Dilemma, Hawk-Dove (also known as Chicken or Snowdrift), Stag Hunt, and Ultimatum games. For each of these games we have created a set of “conceptual” and “sequence” images that explain how the games work without the use of numerical representation. In addition, we have also created a series of “example” images that illustrate realistic scenarios which might be well represented by the Prisoner’s Dilemma, Hawk-Dove, or Stag Hunt games. We have also produced an interactive PDF that allows learners to explore the dynamics of an archetypal Prisoner’s Dilemma “scenario”.
A User’s Guide, aimed at providing teachers and learners with guidance on how to best utilize these images, will be released during the summer of 2012.
The project has been ongoing, evolving in response to feedback we have received and experience using these images in my Evolution of Cooperation course. To follow the full progression of the project, you can access the collected EGIP blog posts that have appeared on this site.
All images in this project are licensed for free use under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) license. Under this license you may use any of these images in any manner provided that you attribute them as follows: “Image(s) by Chris Jensen and Greg Riestenberg”. You may also modify these images provided that you also share modified images under the same Creative Commons license. While we understand that allowing modification also means that we give up creative control over derivative work, we ask that anyone modifying our work respect the integrity of the original graphic design intent; it would pain us to see a botched-up derivative work.
During the Fall 2011 and Spring 2012 semesters, Greg Riestenberg and I created the first infographics packages for the Prisoner’s Dilemma, Stag Hunt, Hawk-Dove, and Ultimatum games. Greg is a graduate student in Pratt’s Communications Design program, and he provided the vast majority of graphic ideas as well as all the graphic expertise and labor for the project. Below you can download full packages for each game in large/CMYK and small/RGB JPEG formats. You can use the gallery below to find the SVG file for each image.
For each game, you can download packages containing complete sets of large versions (letter-sized at 300 dpi) of these files by clicking on the icons below:
For each game, you can download packages containing complete sets of small versions (600-800 pixels wide) of these files by clicking on the icons below:
If you would like to browse for a particular image, below is a gallery of all the images we have made available thus far:
Our latest project is an interactive PDF that allows the user to explore the Prisoner’s Dilemma through a realistic “scenario” in which two businessmen are caught embezzling funds. Using a storybook format, this PDF allows the user to play the role of one of the the embezzlers, choosing to either cooperate with his accomplice by “staying quiet” or defect on his partner-in-crime by “confessing”. By exploring the potential consequences of this choice and learning that the outcome for each embezzler depends on the choice of his accomplice, the user gains an appreciation for this archetypal Prisoner’s Dilemma scenario. You can download this PDF by clicking on the cover page to the left or on the Wikimedia page for this work. There’s also a matrix “example” graphic that was designed to work in conjunction with this interactive PDF.
Do you see a way that we could improve or expand upon the images above? Please visit our EGIP suggestions page and leave a comment.
Thus far, this project has greatly benefitted from feedback we received from Alan Grafen, Hisashi Ohtsuki, Drystan Freemont Phillips, Howard Rheingold, Max Riestenberg, Holger Gerhardt, John Morgan, Mike Mesterton-Gibbons, and Marco Archetti.
You can help spread the word about the Evolutionary Games Infographic Project by embedding one of the following banners into your website:
To embed this banner, copy and paste this HTML code into your site:
<a title=”Link to EGIP” href=”http://egip.christopherxjjensen.com/” target=”_blank”><img title=”EGIP-banner-01-200″ src=”http://www.christopherxjjensen.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/EGIP-banner-01-200.png” alt=”Evolutionary Games Infographic Project” width=”200″ height=”42″ />;
To embed this banner, copy and paste this HTML code into your site:
<a title=”Link to EGIP” href=”http://egip.christopherxjjensen.com/” target=”_blank”><img title=”EGIP-banner-01-200″ src=”http://www.christopherxjjensen.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/EGIP-banner-05-200.png” alt=”Evolutionary Games Infographic Project” width=”200″ height=”42″ /></a>
If you use images from this project, please link to us!
Greg Riestenberg’s work on this project was supported by a Pratt Institute Graduate Research Assistant stipend.
Thank you to Creative Commons for providing meaningful, easy-to-use licenses that balance the retention of copyright with the impulse to share work. Please support Creative Commons and the invaluable work they do.
Thank you to the Wikimedia Foundation for providing a platform that allows us to share our work with the global community. Please support the Wikimedia Foundation and the invaluable work they do.
Want to help us expand this project? Consider making a targeted donation to Pratt Institute. To learn more, contact me or Pratt’s Division of Institutional Advancement.