Introduction
Every day, individuals make choices that influence their own lives and those of others. Individual decisions, such as whether to drive a car or take public transportation and the option to live a healthy lifestyle, affect not only the
individual but also the lives of others. The decision to drive or use public transit influences the city's overall carbon footprint and pollution levels. When most individuals live healthily, medical costs and insurance premiums
decrease for everyone. Individual choices are primarily affected by access to information, resources, incentives, and knowledge of the decisions made by social peers.
Assume that we have a social network G=(V,E), where, |V|=N+1, which includes S, a privileged system node. Two
directed edges ei,j , ej,i exist between any pair of connected nodes i,j, indicating the direction of
flow of information between the pair. An edge eS,j exists between the system S and every individual j.
Each directed edge ei,j has an associated probability pi,j that node j observes information from node
i. The system may influence the probability pi,j by increasing the cost for node j of accessing information
about node i, for example by pushing information about i down the information list that j accesses.
The goal is to understand how aspects including resource constraints (e.g., time, money, physical resources), information, mechanisms, network structure and network size influence decisions made by individuals. Game theory assumes rational actors—we seek to understand what happens when we relax the rationality assumption. The big question to which we seek an answer: Can we guide networks with resource bounded actors to a state that maximizes social welfare?
We will read papers from Computer Science and Behavioral Economics, brainstorm open problems and work on homework that illuminates central ideas.
After taking this class, students should be able to critique research papers, formulate an original research agenda and develop algorithms and systems to address their research question.
Textbooks
The following texts are recommended but not required, for reference.
There are many research papers that will help understand the course content. Please check the references for this
course for more information
Assessments
This graduate-level class focuses on students exploring open-ended questions through the long homework and each
student's final project. Each student will develop a research project independently. The projects can involve working on a novel research problem, an in-depth literature review, and building a system supporting individual decision-making. Regardless of the project type, the instructor will enforce work parity across all projects.
The expectation for the research-oriented project is that the outcome, including the final report, should be of publishable quality at a top-tier conference. For the literature review, the expectation is that the review should be of publishable quality at a journal. For the system-building project, the expectation is that the system is ready to be deployed.
In addition, students are expected to participate in the discussions of the paper presented in each class; paper review and
participation credit will be given to students who attend class.
Use of Generative AI technologies
Use of Generative AI technologies is prohibited in this class. If you use generative AI to summarize papers or generate responses to questions, for example, you are not reflecting on the ideas in the paper and developing new ideas. It is critical that the work that you submit in response to class-related assessments (e.g., long homework, project, paper reviews, weekly questions), is your own. Tools for grammar, rephrasing your written text and spell checks are allowed.
Key Events and Dates
- Responses to weekly questions: due by every Friday 5pm.
- Paper critique, questions for presenter (two papers): due every Monday at 5pm; First due week of Feb. 12th
- Paper selection: Feb. 5th, 2025
- Open question 1: release date: Feb. 7th, due date: Feb. 21st
- Open question 2: release date: Fe. 28th, due date: Mar. 14th
- Class project: Project proposal due: Fe. 26th, Mid-semester report due: Apr. 2nd, Final Project report due: Apr. 25th, Final presentations: end of semester
Expectations on Assignments
- Weekly questions: 1 para response. I will post every week on Campuswire, open-ended questions related to the topics discussed in class the same week. Each
student is expected to respond to the question. You can also build on any response from another student posted earlier.
- Paper presentation: 30 minutes presentation on a paper. The presenter should discuss the problem the paper addresses, the approach taken, the results, and their implications.
The presenter should also discuss the work's limitations and potential future directions. Importantly, the presenter should identify several questions to prompt discussion. The rest of the class will
discuss questions arising from the class discussion on the paper. [Rubric]
- Open ended questions (long homework): 2-3 pages. The two long homework assignments are open-ended questions that require a technical response. I would expect students to
read research papers and propose a potential technical solution with some evidence on why it should work. The evidence
could be empirical (you show results on a dataset), though agent-based model simulations or even a mathematical proof.
- Project proposal: 1 page, with additional space for unlimited references. The project proposal should discuss the problem that you wish to tackle in the project. It should read like an extended
abstract, explaining what problem you want to tackle and why it is important/urgent to address. Discuss past approaches
to tackling the problem, and provide a sketch of what you plan to do and how you plan to evaluate your solution. For the lit review, a complete list of papers that you plan to review. [Rubric]
- Mid-semester report: 4-5 pages, with additional space for unlimited references. The mid-semester report should contain details of the work done, including completed related work, the preliminary idea
for the solution, and a detailed assessment methodology, including baselines to evaluate the proposed idea. For the literature review project, the papers should be organized thematically, at least review of papers along two themes should be completed. [Rubric]
- Final project report: 10-12 pages, with additional space for unlimited references. This final report should be written in a standard ACM conference style format and read like a research paper ready for submission. If you are developing a system, a demonstration of the final working system is expected during the final presentation.
Grading
Type |
Number |
Individual Weight |
Points |
Location |
Weekly questions |
13.0 |
0.38 |
5.0 |
Campuswire |
Paper presentation |
1.0 |
10.0 |
10.0 |
During class |
Paper reviews (10.0) + Participation (10.0) |
20.0 |
1.0 |
20.0 |
Gradescope |
Open Ended long questions |
2.0 |
12.50 |
25.0 |
Gradescope |
Final Project, Report (30.0) + Presentation (10.0) |
1.0 |
40.0 |
40.0 |
Gradescope |
|
|
Total |
100.0 |
|
Class Participation
Since this is a discussion-oriented class, robust class participation is critical to everyone having a great learning
experience. Students are expected to attend all classes and participate in discussions. The class participation grade
will be based on the quality of participation in class discussions. Once we start discussing research papers, students
are expected to have read the paper and be prepared to discuss it. They should be ready to ask the presenter questions.
Each student is expected to submit a paper critique (not a summary!) for each paper presented in class and a question
they would like to ask of the presenter.
Grade cutoffs
The grade cutoffs are (lower end of the range is shown for each grade; the upper bound is below the next higher grade):
A+: ≥ 95, A ≥ 90, A- ≥ 85, B+ ≥ 80, B ≥ 75, B- ≥ 70,
C+ ≥ 65, C ≥ 60, C- ≥ 55, D ≥ 45, E ≥ 35, F ≤ 35
Course Schedule
Date |
Instructor Location |
Theme |
Class Topic |
Paper |
Further reading |
Wed, Jan 22, 2025 |
Chicago |
Introduction |
Introduction |
|
|
Fri, Jan 24, 2025 |
Urbana |
Review of key ideas |
basic ideas from social networks |
Videos:
(Homophily)
(Ties), Lecture Notes:
(Weak Ties, Homophily)
|
David Easley and Jon Kleinberg. Networks, Crowds, and Markets:
Reasoning About a Highly Connected World. Cambridge University Press, New York, NY, USA, 2010. Chapters
2-5 |
Wed, Jan 29, 2025 |
Chicago |
|
Random Graphs, Power laws |
Videos:
(Random graphs)
(Power laws), Lecture Notes:
(Random Graphs, Power Laws)
|
David Easley and Jon Kleinberg. Networks, Crowds, and Markets:
Reasoning About a Highly Connected World. Cambridge University Press, New York, NY, USA, 2010. Chapter
18 |
Fri, Jan 31, 2025 |
Urbana |
|
Game Theory |
Videos:
(Intro)
(Nash), Lecture Notes:
(Game Theory, Auctions)
|
David Easley and Jon Kleinberg. Networks, Crowds, and Markets:
Reasoning About a Highly Connected World. Cambridge University Press, New York, NY, USA, 2010. Chapter 6
|
Wed, Feb 5, 2025 |
Chicago |
|
Auctions +TTC game |
Video:
(Intro)
(Shading in first price auctions)
|
David Easley and Jon Kleinberg. Networks, Crowds, and Markets:
Reasoning About a Highly Connected World. Cambridge University Press, New York, NY, USA, 2010. Chapter 9
Tim Roughgarden. Twenty lectures on algorithmic game theory. Cambridge University Press, 2016. Chapter 9
|
Fri, Feb 7, 2025 |
Online |
|
Mechanism design |
Instructor Lecture |
Tim Roughgarden. Twenty lectures on algorithmic game theory.
Cambridge University Press, 2016. Chapters 1-4 |
Wed, Feb 12, 2025 |
Chicago |
Individual decision making |
Behavioral economics |
Kahneman. A perspective on judgment and choice: Mapping
bounded rationality. American psychologist, pages 697-720, 2003. |
Papadimitriou, C. H. and Yannakakis, M. (1994). On complexity as
bounded rationality (extended abstract). In Proceedings of the Twenty-sixth Annual ACM Symposium on
Theory of Computing, STOC '94, pages 726-733, New York, NY, USA. ACM. |
Fri, Feb 14, 2025 |
Urbana |
|
Cooperation |
Fehr and Herbert Gintis. Human motivation and social
cooperation: Experimental and analytical foundations. Annual Review of Sociology, 33:pp. 43–64, 2007.
|
Garrett Hardin. The
tragedy of the commons. Science, 162(3859):pp. 1243–1248, 1968.
Elinor Ostrom, James Walker, and Roy Gardner. Covenants with and without a sword: Self- governance
is possible. The American Political Science Review, 86(2):pp. 404–417, 1992. |
Wed, Feb 19, 2025 |
Chicago |
|
Decision making under scarcity |
K. Shah, E. Shafir, and S. Mullainathan. Scarcity frames
value. Psychological Science, 26(4):402–412, 2015. |
Sendhil Mullainathan
and Eldar Shafir. Scarcity: The new science of having less and how it defines our lives. Picador,
2014. |
Fri, Feb 21, 2025 |
Urbana |
|
Resource constraints and network growth |
Shah, S. Kumar, and H. Sundaram. Growing attributed networks
through local processes. In The World Wide Web Conference - WWW ’19, pages 3208–3214. ACM Press, May
2019. |
Albert-László
Barabási and Réka Albert. Emergence of scaling in random networks. Science, 286(5439):509,
1999. |
Wed, Feb 26, 2025 |
Chicago |
Social Signals |
Badges |
A., Huttenlocher, D., Kleinberg, J., and Leskovec, J.
(2013). Steering user behavior with badges. In Proceedings of the 22Nd International Conference on World
Wide Web, WWW '13, pages 95o106, New York, NY, USA. ACM. |
David Easley and
Arpita Ghosh. Incentives, gamification, and game theory: An economic approach to badge design. ACM
Trans. Econ. Comput., 4(3):16:1–16:26, June 2016. |
Fri, Feb 28, 2025 |
Online |
|
Social Norms |
N. J., Cialdini, R. B., and Griskevicius, V. (2008).
A room with a viewpoint: Using social norms to motivate environmental conservation in hotels. Journal of
Consumer Research, 35(3):472 - 482. |
Robert B Cialdini.
Influence: The psychology of persuasion. New York, Morrow, 1993. |
Wed, Mar 5, 2025 |
Chicago |
|
Charitable giving (individual vs. statistical) |
Sympathy and callousness: The impact of deliberative thought on
donations to identifiable and statistical victims. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes,
102(2):143 – 153. |
|
Fri, Mar 7, 2025 |
Urbana |
|
Persuasion |
Xiao, P.-S. Ho, X. Wang, K. Karahalios, and H. Sundaram.
Should we use an abstract comic form to persuade? experiments with online charitable donation. Proc. ACM
Hum.-Comput. Interact., 3(CSCW), Nov. 2019. |
- Cristian
Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil, Justin Cheng, Jon Kleinberg, and Lillian Lee. You had me at hello: How
phrasing affects memorability. In Proceedings of the 50th Annual Meeting of the Association for
Computational Linguistics: Long Papers - Volume 1, ACL ’12, pages 892–901, Stroudsburg, PA, USA,
2012. Association for Computational Linguistics.
- Scott McCloud. Understanding comics: The invisible art. William Morrow Paperbacks, 1993.
|
Wed, Mar 12, 2025 |
Chicago |
Social Choice (Voting) |
Knapsack voting |
- A., Krishnaswamy, A. K., Sakshuwong, S.,
and Aitamurto, T.
(2015). Knapsack voting. Collective Intelligence.
-
Ashish Goel, Anilesh K Krishnaswamy, and Sukolsak Sakshuwong. Budget aggregation via knapsack voting:
welfare-maximization and strategy-proofness. Collective Intelligence, pages 783–809, 2016.
|
Arrow, K. J. (1950). A
difficulty in the concept of social welfare. Journal of Political Economy, 58(4):328-346. |
Fri, Mar 14, 2025 |
Online |
|
Quadratic voting |
Ti-Chung Cheng, Tiffany Wenting Li, Yi-Hung Chou,
Karrie Karahalios, and Hari Sundaram. “i can show
what i really like.”: Eliciting preferences via quadratic voting. In The 24th ACM Conference on
Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW 2021), volume 5, page 43 pp.,
Virtual, 2021. ACM. |
- H. Dev, K. Karahalios,
and H. Sundaram. Quantifying voter biases in online platforms: An instrumental variable approach. In
The 22nd ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, CSCW 2019.,
Austin, Texas USA, 2019.
- Lalley, S. P. and Weyl, E. G. (2018). Quadratic
voting: How
mechanism design can radicalize democracy. In AEA Papers and Proceedings, volume 108, pages 33-37.
|
Spring Break March 15—23rd |
|
|
|
|
|
Wed, Mar 26, 2025 |
Chicago |
|
Citizen Assemblies |
Flanigan, Paul Gölz, Anupam Gupta, Brett Hennig, and
Ariel D. Procaccia. Fair algorithms for selecting citizens’ assemblies. Nature, 596(7873): 548–552,
2021. |
|
Fri, Mar 28, 2025 |
Urbana |
|
Incomplete votes |
Daniel Halpern, Gregory Kehne, Ariel D. Procaccia, Jamie
Tucker-Foltz, and Manuel Wüthrich. Representation with incomplete votes. In Proceedings of the AAAI
Conference on Artificial Intelligence, volume 37, pages 5657–5664, 2023. |
|
Wed, Apr 2, 2025 |
Chicago |
Algorithmic decision-making |
Bias in healthcare |
Ziad Obermeyer, Brian Powers, Christine Vogeli, and Sendhil
Mullainathan. Dissecting racial bias in an algorithm used to manage the health of populations. Science,
366(6464):447–453, 2019. |
|
Fri, Apr 4, 2025 |
Online |
|
Auditing online markets |
Aditya Karan, Naina Balepur, and Hari Sundaram. Your browsing
history may cost you: A framework for discovering differential pricing in non-transparent markets. In
Proceedings of the 2023 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency, FAccT ’23, pages
717–735, New York, NY, USA,2023, Association for ComputingMachinery.
|
- Amit Datta, Michael
Carl Tschantz, and Anupam Datta. Automated experiments on ad privacy settings. In Proceedings on
Privacy Enhancing Technologies, volume 1, pages 92–112, 2015.
- Inioluwa Deborah Raji,Andrew Smart,Rebecca N.White,Margaret Mitchell, Timnit Gebru, Ben Hutchinson,
Jamila Smith-Loud, Daniel Theron, and Parker Barnes. Closing the ai accountability gap: Defining an
end-to-end framework for internal algorithmic auditing. In Proceedings of the 2020 Conference on
Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency, FAT* ’20, pages 33–44, New York, NY, USA, 2020.
Association for Computing Machinery.
- Joshua Asplund, Motahhare Eslami, Karrie Karahalios, Christian Sandvig, and Hari Sundaram. Auditing
race and gender discrimination in online housing markets. In Proceedings of the International AAAI
Conference on Web and Social Media, pages 24–35, 6 2020.
|
Wed, Apr 9, 2025 |
Chicago |
|
Fairness |
Andrew D. Selbst, Danah Boyd, Sorelle A. Friedler, Suresh
Venkatasubramanian, and Janet Vertesi. Fairness and abstraction in sociotechnical systems. In
Proceedings of the Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency, FAT* ’19, pages 59–68, New
York, NY, USA, 2019. Association for Computing Machinery. |
|
Fri, Apr 11, 2025 |
Urbana |
|
Learning Policies |
Stephan Zheng et al. ,The AI Economist: Taxation policy design via two-level deep multiagent reinforcement learning.Sci.
Adv.8,eabk2607(2022). |
Rediet Abebe, Solon Barocas, Jon Kleinberg, Karen Levy, Manish
Raghavan, and David G. Robinson. Roles for computing in social change. In Proceedings of the 2020
Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency, FAT* ’20, pages 252–260, New York, NY, USA,
2020. Association for Computing Machinery. |
Wed, Apr 16, 2025 |
Chicago |
|
Performative prediction |
Juan Perdomo, Tijana Zrnic, Celestine Mendler-Dünner, and Moritz
Hardt. Performative prediction. In Hal Daumé III and Aarti Singh, editors, Proceedings of the 37th
International
Conference on Machine Learning, volume 119 of Proceedings of Machine Learning Research, pages 7599–7609.
PMLR,13–18 Jul 2020. |
Hardt, Moritz, Meena
Jagadeesan, and Celestine Mendler-Dünner. "Performative power." Advances in Neural Information
Processing Systems 35 (2022): 22969-22981. |
Fri, Apr 18, 2025 |
Urbana |
Policy |
Algorithmic collective action |
Hardt, Moritz, Eric Mazumdar, Celestine Mendler-Dünner, and
Tijana Zrnic. "Algorithmic collective action in machine learning." In International Conference on
Machine Learning, pp. 12570-12586. PMLR, 2023. |
-
R. H. Thaler, C. R. Sunstein, and J. P. Balz. Choice architecture. In E. Shafir, editor, The
Behavioral Foundations of Public Policy, chapter 25. Princeton University Press, 2014.
- Thaler, R. H. and Sunstein, C. R. (2003). Libertarian paternalism. The American Economic Review,
93(2):175–179.
- Roughgarden, T. (2016). Selfish Routing and the Price of Anarchy, Twenty lectures on algorithmic
game theory. Cambridge University Press.
|
Wed, Apr 23, 2025 |
Chicago |
|
Stewardship |
Bak-Coleman, J. B., Alfano, M., Barfuss, W., Bergstrom, C. T.,
Centeno, M. A., Couzin, I. D., Donges, J. F., Galesic, M., Gersick, A. S., Jacquet, J., Kao, A. B.,
Moran, R. E., Romanczuk, P., Rubenstein, D. I., Tombak, K. J., Van Bavel, J. J., and Weber, E. U.
(2021). Stewardship of global collective behavior. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
118(27). |
Elinor Ostrom.
Governing the commons: The evolution of institutions for collective action. Cambridge university
press, 1990. |
Fri, Apr 25, 2025 |
Online |
|
Project presentations |
15 min presentations (10 min + Q&A) |
|
Wed, Apr 30, 2025 |
Online |
|
Project presentations |
15 min presentations (10 min + Q&A) |
|
Fri, May 2, 2025 |
Online |
|
Project presentations |
15 min presentations (10 min + Q&A) |
|
Wed, May 7, 2025 |
Chicago |
|
Project presentations |
15 min presentations (10 min + Q&A) |
|
Course Policies
Academic Integrity
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Student Code should also be considered as a part of this syllabus.
Students should pay particular attention to Article 1, Part 4: Academic Integrity. Read the Code at the following
URL: http://studentcode.illinois.edu/ Also, read the CS honor code here.
Academic dishonesty may result in a failing grade. Every student is expected to review and abide by the Academic
Integrity Policy: https://studentcode.illinois.edu/article1/part4/1-401/. Ignorance is not an excuse for any
academic
dishonesty. It is your responsibility to read this policy to avoid any misunderstanding. Do not hesitate to ask the
instructor(s) if you are ever in doubt about what constitutes plagiarism, cheating, or any other breach of academic
integrity.
Religious Observances
Illinois law requires the University to reasonably accommodate its students' religious beliefs, observances, and
practices in regard to admissions, class attendance, and the scheduling of examinations and work requirements. You
should examine this syllabus at the beginning of the semester for potential conflicts between course deadlines and
any
of your religious observances. If a conflict exists, you should notify your instructor of the conflict and follow
the
procedure at this URL to request
appropriate accommodations.
This should be done in the first two weeks of classes.
Other Absences
Students are expected to attend all classes. If you are unable to attend a class due to illness or other serious situation including family emergencies, notify the instructor and please submit an absence letter from the
Dean of Students
Statement on CS CARES and CS Values and Code of Conduct
All members of the Illinois Computer Science department - faculty, staff, and students - are expected to adhere to the
CS Values and Code of Conduct. The CS CARES Committee is available to serve as a resource to help people who are concerned about or experience a potential violation of the Code. If you experience such issues, please contact the CS CARES Committee. The instructors of this course are also available for issues related to this class.
Disability-Related Accommodations
To obtain disability-related academic adjustments and/or auxiliary aids, students with disabilities must contact the
course instructor and the Disability Resources and Educational Services (DRES) as soon as possible. To contact DRES,
you
may visit 1207 S. Oak St., Champaign, call 333-4603, email disability@illinois.edu or go
to [https://www.disability.illinois.edu](https://www.disability.illinois.edu/). If you are concerned you have a
disability-related condition that is impacting your academic progress, there are academic screening appointments
available that can help diagnosis a previously undiagnosed disability. You may access these by visiting the DRES
website
and selecting “Request an Academic Screening” at the bottom of the page.
Mental Health
Diminished mental health, including significant stress, mood changes, excessive worry, substance/alcohol abuse, or
problems with eating and/or sleeping can interfere with optimal academic performance, social development, and emotional
wellbeing. The University of Illinois offers a variety of confidential services including individual and group
counseling, crisis intervention, psychiatric services, and specialized screenings at no additional cost. If you or
someone you know experiences any of the above mental health concerns, it is strongly encouraged to contact or visit any
of the University’s resources provided below. Getting help is a smart and courageous thing to do -- for yourself and for
those who care about you.
Counseling Center: 217-333-3704, 610 East John Street Champaign, IL 61820
McKinley Health Center: 217-333-2700, 1109 South Lincoln Avenue Urbana, IL 61801
Sexual Misconduct Reporting Obligation
The University of Illinois is committed to combating sexual misconduct. Faculty and staff members are required to report
any instances of sexual misconduct to the University’s Title IX Office. In turn, an individual with the Title IX Office
will provide information about rights and options, including accommodations, support services, the campus disciplinary
process, and law enforcement options.
A list of the designated University employees who, as counselors, confidential advisors, and medical professionals, do
not have this reporting responsibility and can maintain confidentiality, can be found
here
Other information about resources and reporting is available
here:
Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA)
Any student who has suppressed their directory information pursuant to Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA)
should self-identify to the instructor to ensure protection of the privacy of their attendance in this course.
See https://registrar.illinois.edu/academic-records/ferpa/ for more information on FERPA.