Learning Outcomes
On successful completion, students will be able to:
- understand fundamental tradeoffs,
- model preferences and aggregation methods,
- develop (efficient) algorithms, and
- analyze axiomatic and computational properties
in the context of collective decision making.
Content
Computational Social Choice (COMSOC) addresses problems at the interface of social choice theory and computer science. Social choice theory is the formal study of collective decision making processes, an important example of which are voting rules. We discuss fundamental concepts from social choice theory and investigate axiomatic and computational aspects. Specific topics include:
- Arrow's impossibility result,
- restricted domains of preferences,
- social preference functions,
- tournament solutions,
- strategic voting, and
- multiwinner elections.
Description of Teaching and Learning Methods
The course material is presented in lectures. The lectures are accompanied by tutorials.
