Research on the Price of Anarchy

This is a very interesting article about the uses of Nash equilibrium in our everyday lives. This article focuses on increasing research that is being done in the area of social networking. I found this article especially interesting because it affectively shows how networking strategies, math, engineering, and economy can be combined in order to find flaws in our everyday lives and through the means of these diverse fields, find ways to solve problems in an efficient way.
This article also includes Braess’s example that we covered in class. While introducing Braess’s paradox, the article also shows how Tardos and Roughgarden were intrigued by Braess’s model and thus did further research on his mathematical model. As we learned in class, their findings showed that the general cost of a Nash flow cannot exceed 4/3of the minimum latency flow for graphs that have linear latency functions. Their findings also show that a network can be made more efficient by increasing edge capacity of the network instead of building further routes.
The article has an interesting ending as well, because it talks about specific professors in various universities who are doing more and more research in the area of social networks. Thus, it can be seen that the tools we learn in class have important applications in our everyday life and much research is being done to affectively use these tools.
Here is the link:
http://www.siam.org/pdf/news/232.pdf

This website talks about the effects of selfish traffic routing and how it relates to the price of anarchy of traffic routing.
http://theorymatters.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=Visioning.PriceAnarchy

As talked about in class, selfish routing is essentially the Nash Equilibrium of a traffic network. Each person believes that the perceived quickest way from point A to point B is the best way to go. This can lead to a cumulative delay that is greater than the optimum cumulative delay. Basically, this can be measured by Price of Anarchy. Ultimately, the Price of Anarchy is the basis for how to regulate traffic and determine how to minimize cumulative delay in a network. However, society is at a state where most people will always follow their impulse and take a highway to go places, rather than go on back roads to help move along traffic. This is why traffic will always exist, however, different road networks developed and various strategies can be imposed to limit this traffic, and try to move the Price of Anarchy of the delay closest to 1. The closer the Price of Anarchy to 1 the better, because this means that the delay is almost optimum. However, it is interesting as to the psychological factors affecting traffic. If there was a way for people to be relayed the resulting Price of Anarchy to affect their decision to go a certain way, would that make a difference in the decisions that people make? It would be an interesting project to look into, but public knowledge of Price of Anarchy could be used to optimize the situations in certain areas.