Publications & Technical Reports | |
R266 | |
Approximating Spatial Evolutionary Games using Bayesian Networks
Vincent Hsiao, Xinyue Pan, Dana Nau, and Rina Dechter.
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Abstract
Evolutionary Game Theory is an application of game theory to
evolving populations of organisms. Of recent interest are EGT models
situated on structured populations or spatial evolutionary games.
Due to the complexity added by introducing a population structure,
model analysis is usually performed through agent-based
Monte-Carlo simulations. However, it can be difficult to obtain
desired quantities of interest from these simulations due to stochastic
effects. We define a framework for modeling spatial evolutionary
games using Dynamic Bayesian Networks that capture
the underlying stochastic process. The resulting Dynamic Bayesian
Networks can be queried for quantities of interest by performing
exact inference on the network. We then propose a method for producing
approximations of the spatial evolutionary game through
the truncation of the corresponding DBN, taking advantage of the
high symmetry of the model. This method generalizes mean-field
and pair approximations in the literature for spatial evolutionary
games. Furthermore, we show empirical results demonstrating the
capability of the method to obtain much better accuracy than pair
approximation with respect to stochastic simulations.
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