DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE

EXAMINATION AND ASSESSMENT FEEDBACK FORM 2011/12

This form should provide generic feedback to students on recent examinations (or coursework in the
case of 100% CA modules).

MODULE CODE: COMP323

MODULE TITLE: INTRODUCTION TO COMPUTATIONAL GAME THEORY

LECTURER(S): DR PIOTR KRYSTA

1. INTRODUCTION

Please give a general description of the examination or assessment here, including:



Exam is 80%, 2 CA tasks each worth 10%.



Exam paper format: Section A with 6 questions totalling to 62 marks, section B with 3
questions each for 19 marks (students choose any 2 of 3 in section B). Thus the maximum
total number of marks is 100. Available time is 2.5 hours.



Number of students: 98 registered to module, 94 have taken the exam.

2. EXAMINATION AND ASSESSMENT FEEDBACK

i. General Comments

Please give feedback or other details of the exam here
My general impression was that some number of students have not studied well the
knowledge from lecture notes (or recommended books) and thus the answers to some
questions that just asked about this knowledge were not so good. On the other hand many
students performed extremely well on (difficult) type of questions which required
creative thinking (i.e., which required to solve and/or prove something formally).

ii. Description of Specific Topics in Exam Questions

Explain how well the students answer questions in each topic. What were the most common
mistakes or errors in these questions (if any)? In which way could student
solutions/explanations be improved, corrected or better organised to provide a more
complete or correct answer to the questions?



Area/topic 1: Applications of notions of game theory (questions A1, A4, A6)

These were answered quite well, but still my impression was that the students should
have better studied the lecture notes. Question A1(c) was not answered well by many
students, which is surprising because I was suggesting a similar question during the
lectures. A4 was easy and answered by most, but many of them did not provide
explanation (that I asked explicitly for), meaning that many students do not pay good
attention to what is asked in a question!



Area/topic 2: General knowledge/high level kind of thinking and proving claims (Q
A3(b,c), A5(b,c), B1, B2, B3): I would advise, not to only study all small topics separately,
but once they’re studied to reflect on the whole of the area to spot the connections.
Some of these questions required to “collect” the knowledge over several relevant
lectures. And above all (what I pointed many times to) they require a lot of exercising
(studying exercises and their solutions, studying arguments in the lecture notes). What is

very encouraging is that many, many students actually correctly solved the questions
asking about formal proofs/arguments.



Area/topic 3: Modelling strategic settings by games (Q A2, A3(a), A5(a)): As I said in the
revision lecture, the best way of solving such questions is to practice, and this is not to
be avoided preparing to the exam. In particular many similar exercises were presented
at the tutorials along with their solutions – that is, studying them and their solutions is
needed.



Area/topic 4: General knowledge (Q A1(a), Q4, Q6): This question is best answered by
carefully studying the lecture notes.

3. SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER STUDY AND TRAINING

Please indicate ways in which students can further their knowledge on this subject, if
appropriate

Most important suggestions: Learn the material beforehand, especially parts that I
pointed at the revision lecture which are most important (do the critical thinking while
studying the material by asking yourself “what does it mean?”). Second, practice a
number of exercises that ask of how to model strategic settings with game theory. Third,
study the arguments/proofs presented in the lecture notes and in the exercises and their
solutions.



Signed: Piotr Krysta

Date: 13/02/2012