Focal Points

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Focal Points

• (Schellings Points)

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Thomas C. Schelling

• Born in 1921
• Ph.D. in Economics, Harvard University
• Currently University of Maryland school of
  public affairs.
• Worked in Economics / political sciences.
• 8 books more then 140 papers
• The Strategy of Conflict, 1960
• Arms and Influence, 1976
• Bargaining, Communication and Limited War, 1993

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The Strategy of Conflict

• Deals with Theory of Bargaining/conflict/strategy.
  
• Elements of A Theory of Strategy.
• A Reorientation of Game Theory,
• Strategy with a Random Ingredient.
• Surprise Attack A Study of Mutual Distrust.
• We are talking about a very interesting concept
  that resides inside 15 pages from the first
  chapter of the book.

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Solutions

• Question 1
• 36/42 wrote HEADS, 6/42 wrote TAILS.
• Question 2
• 37/41 picked one of the FIRST THREE NUMBERS
  (7, 100, 13) with 7 leading on a slight margin,
  100 second place and 13 third place.

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Solutions

• Question 3
• 24/41picked upper left corner. 38/31 were on
  that same diagonal.
• Question 4
• Absolute majority picked Grand Central
  Station (information booth).

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Solutions

• Question 5
• All of them picked 1200 noon.
• Question 6
• Variety of answer, but 2/5 picked 1.

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Solutions

• Question 7
• 12/41 picked 1,000,000. 38/41 picked power of
  10 number (the three others were 2 64 and 1
  64,000).
• Question 8
• 36/41 split it fifty-fifty.

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Focal Point

• People can often coordinate their intentions
  with others if each knows that the other is
  trying to do the same.
• A Prime characteristic of most of these
  solutions ., is some kind of prominence
• This prominence depends on time and place and who
  the people are.

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What has been done

• Theoretical Work
• Gauthier (1975) coordination.
• Bacharach (1993) Variable Universe Games
• Janssen (1995) Rationalizing Focal Points
• Sugden (1995) Toward a Theory of Focal Points

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What has been done

• Experimental Work
• Van Huyck (1990) Tactic Coordination Games.
• Mehta, Starmer, Sugden
• (1992) an experimental investigation of focal
  points in coordination and bargaining.
• (1994) the nature of salience, empirical
  investigation of pure coordination games
• (1994) focal points in pure coordination games,
  an experimental investigation

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What has been done

• Overview Papers
• Janssen (1998) Focal Points.
• Computer Science Papers
• Sarit Kraus, Jeff Rosenschein, Maier Fenster
  (2000) Exploiting Focal Points Among Alternative
  Solutions Two Approaches
• Conference
• Focal Points coordination, complexity and
  communication in strategic contexts (Lund
  University, august 1997).

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Our Path

• Goal
• Using Focal Points insights in the problem of
  selection between multiple equilibriums with same
  utility.
• Example 1)Robot finding a key.
• 2)Travel-Agent agent.
• Any application that a computer agent needs to
  select between options for a human agent.

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• The 1st Sub Goal
• Improving Machine Learning classifiers using
  Focal Points.
• The Domain
• A game were the user has to choose a goal between
  few goals with the same payoff.

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• Using the following FP properties
• Uniqueness
• Centrality
• Firstness

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• The Method
• Data Gathering
• Building ANN/ID3 tree classifiers (given a game
  instance will classify which goal the user will
  choose).
• Incorporate Focal Point properties into the data
  and hope for better classification with shorter
  learning time.

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Discussion