Course talk:CPSC522/Bounded Rationality

Scheme

• The topic is relevant for the course. 5
• The writing is clear and the English is good. 4
• The page is written at an appropriate level for CPSC 522 students (where the students have diverse backgrounds). 5
• The formalism (definitions, mathematics) was well chosen to make the page easier to understand. 4
• The abstract is a concise and clear summary. 5
• There were appropriate (original) examples that helped make the topic clear. 3
• There was appropriate use of (pseudo-) code. 4
• It had a good coverage of representations, semantics, inference and learning (as appropriate for the topic). 5
• It is correct. 5
• It was neither too short nor too long for the topic.5
• It was an appropriate unit for a page (it shouldn't be split into different topics or merged with another page). 5
• It links to appropriate other pages in the wiki. 5
• The references and links to external pages are well chosen. 5
• I would recommend this page to someone who wanted to find out about the topic. 4
• This page should be highlighted as an exemplary page for others to emulate. 4

If I was grading it out of 20, I would give it: 17

Comments

I have some late comments that I found when reading your wiki again. They may be useful to you for the next assignments. I think the topic is very interesting. But, it's a bit hard to understand especially the first parts like "compare to unbounded rationality". You can choose better sentences instead of "Before bounded rationality there was unbounded rationality" or "it was an absolute and opposed to it was irrationality". You may find it helpful to make sentences shorter by using less "and". Also, I think it's better to mention what figure corresponds to what part in your wiki; figures 2 and 4 are not mentioned anywhere.

On a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 means "strongly disagree" and 5 means "strongly agree" please rate and comment on the following:

• The topic is relevant for the course. 5
• The writing is clear and the English is good. 5
• The page is written at an appropriate level for CPSC 522 students (where the students have diverse backgrounds). 5
• The formalism (definitions, mathematics) was well chosen to make the page easier to understand. 4
• The abstract is a concise and clear summary. 5
• There were appropriate (original) examples that helped make the topic clear. 4
• There was appropriate use of (pseudo-) code. 5
• It had a good coverage of representations, semantics, inference and learning (as appropriate for the topic). 5
• It is correct. 5
• It was neither too short nor too long for the topic.5
• It was an appropriate unit for a page (it shouldn't be split into different topics or merged with another page). 5
• It links to appropriate other pages in the wiki. 5
• The references and links to external pages are well chosen. 5
• I would recommend this page to someone who wanted to find out about the topic. 5
• This page should be highlighted as an exemplary page for others to emulate. 4

If I was grading it out of 20, I would give it: 18

The topic is relevant and the page provides useful information on the topic. There are a good amount of external sources and the motivation is psychology is a useful addition. The only suggestion I can think of is, in the first sentence with “The economics due to von Neumann and Morgenstern” you may want to link to a definition.

This is a very good start. Nice selection of topics and scope. In general I think the article would benefit from a more wiki-like style (see the wikipedia style guide for what is meant by that) and some more background for a few important concepts.

Some concrete points / suggestions:

"Bounded rationality is the idea that the rationality of individual is limited by resources and that, while logical axioms may not be transitive, those individuals are nonetheless acting rationally." -- is it necessary to talk about transitivity of logical axioms in the first sentence? Perhaps just full stop after resources?

"We"-form, not appropriate for a wiki. (I think..)

Does the article build on the concept of satisficing? Perhaps work into the text?

Related pages, spelling: "has application"

"Game Theory assumes unbounded rationality" -- not entirely true, game theory is flexible! Perhaps something like "In game theory, it is typically assumed that agents acts rationally". Then again, not quite sure..

Is the Ouroboros really relevant? I know you like snakes, but..

Title: "Compare to unbounded rationality" -- comparison?

"Classical economics à la von Neumann and Morgenstern" -- à la is not plain English? And Classical economics isn't really due to VN and M, more the modern game-theoretic foundations.

"complete, or asymptotically complete, rationality of agents, or at least the market as a whole." -- what does asymptotically complete mean? What is "the market as a whole"? Want some definitions here.

"Logical axioms in that world are transitive" -- Not completely clear what "that world" refers to. Also, logical axioms in themselves are not transitive, rather the '->'-relation in a logical system is transitive.

"Agents maximize the expected utility 'E'" -- This breaks standard notational conventions for the expectation operator. Perhaps best to leave out the symbol or to define utility properly.

Bounded Rationality should not be capitalized; it is not a proper name. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Abbreviations

"It may be too much effort to imagine expected utility for all eternity given an action (which is what E is defined as)" -- what does it mean to 'imagine' expected utility? Also, you have not defined E.

Do you have any sources that show that "the alternative is a hard problem" It is not true that modeling bounded rationality is always a hard problem.

"... and other mind games are simplistic illustrations of this quality." -- are these examples really 'mind-games'? And are they 'simplistic illustrations of this quality'? Anyway, what is 'this quality', is it the quality of BR? Does this mean BR is a 'quality'?

"a competition between System 1 and System 2, the unconscious and conscious systems in the brain" -- Perhaps an idea to have a whole subsection about this and the preceding mind-games? Mention Tversky & Kahneman etc.

"Alternatively, or perhaps in complement" -- alternatively or in complement?

"This is because information acquisition is costly and at the far end of the spectrum, impossibly costly." I don't think costly needs to be in bold here. Also, what does it mean to be impossibly costly?

The discussion on sparsity refers to a set of terms that aren't really defined: "weighted model, pyramidal problems". It is not clear exactly what is meant by sparsity in this context, although the image helps. Perhaps just explain what sorts of 'models' you are talking about here..

Can you explain the "Sparse Bounded Rationality Algorithm"?

Reinforcement Learning -- also should not be capitalized. Is it scientific to say that BR and RL are 'cousins'?