Who am I?
My name is Vicky and I have just finished my junior year at Smith College
in Northampton, Massachusetts. I am double majoring in computer science and
neuroscience. My non-academic interests include running, swimming and reading
and as soon as I get a chance to, I hope to take a swim in the Brown pool.
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Who am I working for?
I am working for Amy Greenwald, a very enthusiastic professor in the computer science department at
Brown. Her research interests are game theory and multiagent user learning with a focus on internet agents.
To find out more about her, see her webpage
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What is it that I am doing?
I am working on a project another student had started and worked on with
Amy last year. What it involves is looking at different Pricebot agent
algorithms and comparing them. Pricebots are used on the web for determining
what price some seller should set its price at. These Pricebot agents generally use information
they learn from each other as input into their new price (one of these agents/algorithms, however
uses no information from the other agent types, just a formula!) The student that had
started the project had
written a program that has these algorithms implemented, in a simulator she wrote. What
happens in her program is that those algorithms that make a good profit
are increased in number and those that are not doing as well are decreased
in number. In essence, evolution occurs. I am working with
the program as a way of seeing the interactions of these different agents.
We are then going to look at which algorithms do the best and try and understand why this is.
Check out my weekly journal below for my progress.
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