PINGZHONG TANG

 

　

　

　

Postdoc

Computer Science Department

Carnegie Mellon University

5000 Forbes Ave, Pittsburgh

PA15213, USA 

  

　

Office: GHC 9108

Phone (cell): 412 805 7138  

Email:   kenshin at cs dot cmu dot edu

I am currently a Postdoc at Computer Science Department, Carnegie Mellon University, working with Prof. Tuomas Sandholm. I obtained my PhD at Department of Computer Science, HKUST. My thesis advisor is Prof. Fangzhen Lin, whose advisor Prof. Yoav Shoham hosted me as a visiting student at Computer Science Department, Stanford University  in 2008. In the winter of 2009, I also visited EconCS group of SEAS at Harvard University, working with Prof. Yiling Chen. I obtained my B.E. in Computer Science from University of Science and Technology of China in 2005, when I was a member of Multi-agent systems Lab (aka WrightEagle Robo-Soccer Team).

News:

I have joined IIIS, Tsinghua University as a tenure-track assistant professor. My new homepage is here. I will no longer update this page.

My article with Fangzhen Lin on “Discovering Theorems in Game Theory: Two-Person Games with Unique Nash Equilibria Payoff” was ranked the most read article on AIJ website in 2011.

RESEARCH INTERESTS

Artificial Intelligence

Multi-agent System, Electronic Commerce, Knowledge Representation, Machine Learning

Economics

Game Theory, Social Choice Theory, Mechanism Design, Pricing, Finance, Market

　

My major research interest lies in the interface of AI and Economics. In particular,

·         Searching for and characterizing revenue-optimal combinatorial auctions.

·         As the theme of my PhD dissertation, I am interested in automatically proving and discovering properties in game theory and social choice theory. With the help of computers, I have discovered several interesting properties about Pure Nash Equilibrium. I am also proud that I have proved almost all the important theorems in social choice theory and mechanism design theory. Read my dissertation here PDF.

·         In the meanwhile, I am also interested in all kinds of computational/pure game theoretical and social choice theoretical problems. Together with my co-authors, I have provided a computational framework for evaluation of voting rules and also provided several practically useful mechanisms for scheduling team competition.

·         I am interested in designing game-theoretically desirable sport competition rules as well as new card games.

Publications

·         Bayesian vote manipulation: optimal strategies and impact on welfare. (with Craig Boutilier, Tyler Lu, Ariel Procaccia), UAI-12, Catalina Island, US. PDF

 

·         Optimal Auctions for Spiteful Bidders. (With Tuomas Sandholm). AAAI-12, July, Toronto, Canada. PDF.

 

·         Coalitional Structure of the Muller-Satterthwaite Theorem. (With Tuomas Sandholm). CoopMas-12, June, Valencia, Spain. PDF.

 

·         Mixed Bundling Auctions with Reserve Prices. (With Tuomas Sandholm). AAMAS-12, June, Valencia, Spain. PDF.

Invited to Informs-11, Charlotte, USA.

 

·         Discovering Theorems in Game Theory: Two-Person Games with Unique Nash Equilibria Payoff. (With Fangzhen Lin). Artificial Intelligence, 2011.PDF.Link.

 

·         Approximating optimal combinatorial auctions for complements using restricted welfare maximization. (with Tuomas Sandholm). In IJCAI-11, Barcelona, Spain. PDF.

Invited to Informs-11, Charlotte, USA.

An earlier version appeared in ACM EC-11 Workshop on Bayesian Mechanism Design (WBMD), June, 2011, San Jose, CA.

 

·         Computer-aided Theorem Discovery - A New Adventure and its Application to Economic Theory. PhD dissertation, HKUST, 2010. PDF.

　

·         Two Equivalence Results for Two-person Strict Games. (With Fangzhen Lin) Games and Economic Behavior, 2011. PDF. Link..

　

·         Designing Competitions between Teams of Individuals. (With Yoav Shoham and Fangzhen Lin). Artificial Intelligence, 2010. PDF. Link.

　

·         A Framework for Quantitative Evaluation of Voting Rules. (With Mike Munie, Yoav Shoham). In Logic, Game Theory and Social Choice 6, August, 2009, Ibaraki. Japan. PDF.

　

·         Discovering Theorems in Game Theory: Two-Person Games with Unique Nash Equilibria Payoff. (With Fangzhen Lin). In IJCAI-09, July, Pasadena, USA. PDF.

　

·         Computer Aided Proofs of Arrow’s and Other Impossibility Theorems. (With Fangzhen Lin) Artificial Intelligence, 2009. PDF. Link.

A 3-line (6-line if you don’t have a wide screen) proof for Arrow’s theorem

1 If there is a function on N voters and M candidates satisfying Arrow’s conditions, its restriction on N-1 voters and M candidates can do the same

                        2 If there is a function on N voters and M candidates satisfying Arrow’s conditions, its restriction on N voters and M-1 candidates can do the same

3 I write a program that exhaustively enumerates all the functions on 2 voters and 3 candidates satisfying Arrow’s condition, it returns nothing. QED

　

·         Team Competition. (With Yoav Shoham and Fangzhen Lin) In AAMAS-09, May, Budapest, Hungary. PDF

  

·         Computer Aided Proofs of Arrow’s and Other Impossibility Theorems. (With Fangzhen Lin) In AAAI-08, July, Chicago, USA. PDF

　

·         Computer-Aided Proofs of Theorems in Implementation Theory. (With Fangzhen Lin) Manucript.PDF

　

·         Two-person Bridge. Manuscript.