Selfish Routing Observed

The Prompt

Identify a real-world system — a traffic network, an internet routing protocol, a shared resource, or a public facility — in which individual optimization plausibly degrades collective performance. Describe the setting, the individual incentive, and the collective cost. If possible, estimate how much worse the selfish outcome is compared to the coordinated optimum. The exercise may be observational rather than computational.

Completion Criteria

A description of the system, the selfish incentive, the collective cost, and a rough estimate or qualitative argument about the magnitude of the efficiency loss.

Students who have attested

No Students have attested this quest yet. Be the first.