Decision Theory

Abstract: Should I get car insurance? Where should I invest, in stocks or real estate? Will India win the ongoing Test series against England?

There are many situations in which we must make decisions under uncertainty. The purpose of decision theory is to help us do so systematically. Decision theory is related to game-theory, economics, bayesian analysis, sociology. It is part of the curriculum of Business Schools and operations research programs. But most of all, the definitions and theorems from this theory are simple, intuitive, fun to discuss, and you will be conscious of using decision theory in your daily life. How much of the mathematics that you have learnt can you say that about?

Target Audience: All engineers and budding engineers would be interested in the short course. Economists, operations researchers, machine learnists and statisticians would also be interested.

Course Topics: Lecture 1: Overview of Decision Theory. Lecture 2: Proof of a few interesting theorems. (If possible, we will include the famed rationality of an expected value gambler.)

Prerequisites: Basic probability.

Teacher's Introduction: Mukund Sundararajan did his M.S. in Computer Science from Stanford University and is currently pursuing his PhD there. Mukund's research is in design and analysis of mechanisms, including analysis of security and privacy protocols, and design of truthfulness inducing economic mechanisms. He has lectured for us before.