Dr. Vicki Allan
2016
Etextiles “Stitch” Grant
• NSF sponsored (2 years), $1,200,000
• Teach public school teachers how to mix
coding with crafting with science.
• Connect LEDs to Arduino
• Teach about basic circuitry
• LED’s program to go off/on, blink, fade.
• Play music using buzzers
• Pressure sensors, accelerometer,
temperature sensor
Why?
• Introduce coding
• Stitch circuits – short circuits
• Learn better when build it. Situated
learning. Data gathering/scaling.
• Teachers learn – so they can teach
students
Projects
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Paper Circuits
Blinking bracelet
Temperature sensing lunchbox
Pressure sensing backpack
Slouching t-shirt.
Need a job?
• Stitch is looking to hire CS types to help
with professional development for
teachers and gathering of data (data
base).
• Contact Colby Tofel-Grehl, Teacher
Education and Leadership (TEAL)
• [email protected]
App Camp
• NSF Funding (3 years) $800,000 with ITLS
(Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences)
• Middle school students
• High school mentors
• Teach how to write cell phone apps using App
Inventor. Drag and drop.
• Study how to introduce coding to young women
• Why is their such a gender gap in CS?
Research Questions?
• What is role of all girl (or mixed) environment on
self-efficacy?
• What is role of all female (or mixed) mentors?
• What is role of showing video clips of successful
young professionals?
• What is the effect on the mentors of being seen
as an expert?
• What creativity is shown when start with same
basic instructions?
Smart Cities
• Direct traffic in different ways, so group
benefits.
• Change direction of lanes, speed limits,
stop light times – to move traffic better.
• Users need to visit a series of locations,
but time to travel a link changes over the
course of the day. How to find the best
sequence of locations to visit?
Multiagent systems – program
computer agents to act for
people.
If two heads are better than
one, how about 2000?
Monetary Auction
• Object for sale: a one dollar bill
• Rules
– Highest bidder gets it
– Highest bidder and the second highest bidder
pay their bids
– New bids must beat old bids by 5¢.
– Bidding starts at 5¢.
– What would your strategy be?
Give Away
• Bag of candy to give away
• Put your name and vote on piece of paper.
• If everyone in the class says “share”, the
candy is split equally.
• If only one person says “I want it”, he/she
gets the candy to himself.
• If more than one person says “I want it”, I
keep the candy.
Regret?
• Seeing how everyone else played, do you
wish you would have played differently?
• If you could have talked to others before
(collusion), what would you have said?
Would it change anything?
The point?
• You are competing against others who are
as smart as you are.
• If there is a “weakness” that someone can
exploit to their benefit, someone will find it.
• You don’t have a central planner who is
making the decision.
• Decisions happen in parallel.
Social Choice
• Suppose: Trying to decide which special
topics class to offer.
• Committee of three people to make
decision
• Have narrowed it down to four classes.
• Each person has a different ranking for the
candidates.
• How do we make a decision?
• Termed a social choice function
Suppose we have only three voters
Individual Preferences
Joe ranks c > d > b > a
Sam ranks a > c > d > b
Sally ranks b > a > c > d
What classes should be
taught?
Runoff - Binary Protocol
Joe ranks c > d > b > a
Sam ranks a > c > d > b
Sally ranks b > a > c > d
Who should be hired?
One idea – consider candidates pairwise
winner (c, (winner (a, winner(b,d)))
Runoff - Binary Protocol
One voter ranks c > d > b > a
One voter ranks a > c > d > b
One voter ranks b > a > c > d
winner (c, (winner (a, winner(b,d)))=a
winner (d, (winner (b, winner(c,a)))=d
winner (c, (winner (b, winner(a,d)))=c
winner (b, (winner (a, winner(c,d)))=b
surprisingly, order of pairing yields
different winner!
Borda protocol
assigns an alternative |O| points for the
highest preference, |O|-1 points for the
second, and so on
 The counts are summed across the
voters and the alternative with the
highest count becomes the social choice
18
Borda Paradox
• a > b > c >d
Is this a good
• b > c > d >a
way?
• c>d>a>b
• a>b>c>d
• b > c > d> a
• c > d > a >b
• a > b >c >d
Clear loser
a=18, b=19, c=20, d=13
Borda Paradox – remove loser (d),
Now: winner changes
• a > b > c >d
• b > c > d >a
• c>d>a>b
• a>b>c>d
• b > c > d> a
• c>d>a>b
• a > b >c > d
a=18, b=19, c=20,d=13
a>b>c
 b > c >a
 c>a>b
 a>b>c
 b>c>a
 c>a>b
 a >b >c
a=15,b=14, c=13

When loser is removed, third choice becomes winner!
Issues with Borda
• favorite betrayal. How can anyone report
different preference to gain advantage?
B wins in this example, but the middle player can change
the winner to something he likes better. How?
Who wins using Borda protocol?
(if highest is first choice)
2 points
1 points
0 points
Inserted clone
Now who wins?
3 points
2 points
1 points
0 points
Other issues with Borda
• less expressive
• voter strategy
Example: 3 candidates each with strong supporters. Many nonentities that no one really cared about.
the strategic votes are:
A > nonentities > B > C (cast by about 1/3 of the voters)
B > nonentities > C > A (cast by about 1/3 of the voters)
C > nonentities > A > B (cast by about 1/3 of the voters)
---------------------------------------------------------------A,B, and C each get an average score of N/3. Non-entities score about
N/2. So a non-entity always wins and the 3 good candidates always
are ranked below average.
Conclusion
• Finding the best mechanism for social
choice is not easy
Coalition Formation Overview
• Tasks: Various skills required by team
members
• Agents form coalitions
• Agent types - Differing policies regarding
which coalition to join
• How do policies interact?
Multi-Agent Coalitions
• “A coalition is a set of agents that work together
to achieve a mutually beneficial goal” (Klusch
and Shehory, 1996)
• Reasons agent would join Coalition
– Cannot complete task alone
– Complete task more quickly
Optimization Problem
Not want a centralized solution
• Communication
• Privacy
• Situation changing
• Self-interested
Looking for partners for field trip.
Arc labels represent goodness of
pairing according to agents.
What partnerships form?
Scenario 1 – Bargain Buy
(supply-demand)
• Store “Bargain Buy”
advertises a great price
• 300 people show up
• 5 in stock
• Everyone sees the advertised
price, but it just isn’t possible
for all to achieve it
Scenario 2 – selecting a spouse
(agency)
• Bob knows all the
characteristics of the
perfect wife
• Bob seeks out such a
wife
• Why would the perfect
woman want Bob?
Scenario 3 – hiring a new PhD
(strategy)
• Universities ranked 1,2,3
• Students ranked a,b,c
Dilemma for second
tier university
• offer to “a” student
• likely rejected
• But rejection is delayed - see other options
• “b” students are gone as they got tired of
waiting
Scenario 4 (trust)
What if one
person talks a
good story, but
his claims of
skills are really
inflated?
He isn’t
capable of
performing.
the task.
Scenario 5
The coalition is completed and rewards are earned.
How are they fairly divided among agents with various
contributions?
If organizer is greedy, why wouldn’t others replace him
with a cheaper agent?
Scenario 6
You consult with local traffic to find a good
route home from work
But so does everyone else