If you can't stop thinking about how short this Easter break is going to be, you really have to come freshen up your mind with our next WISE presenter!
On April 20, 2011 at 12.45-2 pm in Room E, Prof. Marco Li Calzi will present his work on "The power of diversity over large solution spaces".
Here is an abstract of his presentation:
ABSTRACT
We consider a team of agents with limited problem-solving ability facing a disjunctive task over a large solution space. We provide sufficient conditions for the following four statements. First, two heads are better than one: a team of two agents will solve the problem even if neither agent alone would be able to. Second, teaming up does not guarantee success: if the agents are not sufficiently creative, even a team of arbitrary size may fail to solve the problem. Third, "defendit numerus": when the agent's problem-solving ability is adversely affected by the complexity of the solution space, the solution of the problem requires only a mild increase in the size of the team. Fourth, groupthink impairs the power of diversity: if agents' abilities are positively correlated, a larger team is necessary to solve the problem.
The paper is available at http://ideas.repec.org/p/vnm/wpaper/206.html
Please note lunch will take place before the seminar, between 12.45 and 1 pm, with the presentation starting only at 1 pm.
Remember also that WISE went green, thus we kindly ask you to confirm by email your participation to the seminar in due time, in order to allow to prepare the right amount of food.
Looking forward to seeing you all at WISE!
-the WISE staff
The blog of the Wednesday Informal Seminar in Economics (WISE)