Annotated Defeasible Logic

Defeasible logics provide several linguistic features to support the expression of defeasible knowledge. There is also a wide variety of such logics, expressing different intuitions about defeasible reasoning. However, the logics can only combine in trivial ways. This limits their usefulness in contexts where different intuitions are at play in different aspects of a problem. In particular, in some legal settings, different actors have different burdens of proof, which might be expressed as reasoning in different defeasible logics. In this paper, we introduce annotated defeasible logic as a flexible formalism permitting multiple forms of defeasibility, and establish some properties of the formalism. This paper is under consideration for acceptance in Theory and Practice of Logic Programming.Comment: Paper presented at the 33nd International Conference on Logic Programming (ICLP 2017), Melbourne, Australia, August 28 to September 1, 2017 16 pages, LaTe

Using Benford\u27s Law to Detect Fraud in the Insurance Industry

Benford\u27s Law is the mathematical phenomena that states that the first digits or left most digits in a list of numbers will occur with an expected logarithmic frequency. While this method has been used in industries such as oil and gas and manufacturing to identify fraudulent activity, it has not been applied to the health insurance industry. Since health insurance companies process a large number of claims each year and these claims are susceptible to fraud, the use of this method in this industry is appropriate. This paper examines the application of Benford\u27s Law to four health insurance companies located in the Midwest. For each company, analysis was performed on the first digit distribution, the first two-digit distribution, and providers with high volumes of claims. The results show that the populations are similar to the frequencies predicted by Benford\u27s Law. The findings also suggested possible fraudulent activity by specific providers, however, the companies determined that these results occurred due to abnormal billing practices and were not fraudulent. The insurance companies that participated in this study will continue to use this method to further detect fraudulent claims

Internal Auditor Participation in Systems Development Projects

There are differing viewpoints in the internal auditing literature regarding the role of internal audit in systems development projects. One argument is that internal audit should act as consultants for such projects. A counter argument is that if internal auditors act as consultants this could impair in dependence. This study surveyed chief audit executives to determine their perceptions of the role of internal audit in systems development projects as well as the actual involvement of their departments in such projects. The findings show that chief audit executives place more importance on internal audit acting as consultants and less importance on independence in these projects. The results also suggest that internal audit has limited involvement in the different phases of the Systems Development Life Cycle of these projects

Going-Concern Opinions: Broadening the Expectations Gap

A rash of high-profile bankruptcies has led to a search for answers. Many hold auditors responsible for not detecting the potential for bankruptcy during the most recent audit. The Weiss Report, a study of several dozen bankrupt companies submitted to the U.S. Senate during its deliberations on the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, found a broad and massive failure on the part of auditors to raise yellow flags that indicate potential bankruptcy. The authors examined Weiss\u27 methodology and found that, applied to a broader group of companies, Weiss\u27 criteria would have incorrectly predicted bankruptcy for nearly half of the non-bankrupt companies studied. This failure to accurately predict undermines the credibility of the subsequently enacted legislation

The Potential Role of Spirituality in Conducting Field Research: Examination of a Model and a Process

The Cognitive-Experiential Tri-Circle is a model developed by the author to explain the relationship between conducting field research and reflecting on beliefs, including spiritual beliefs. His sample included graduate students, faculty, and friends of the university who participated in field research trips to Cuba through Loyola University Chicago. The basic assumption of the model is that self, beliefs, and experience are related in such a way that depth applies to each equally in a field research experience. Depth of experience for the self leads to depth of belief for the self . Reflection tools that encourage depth of belief for the self lead to depth of experience for the self. The author designed a particular method for processing or reflection which he used with participants on these trips. He al so discusses at length the philosophical issues involved in this topic. The paper concludes that the processing method was effective and that the model is applicable to field research experiences

Contractibility and Contractible Approximations of Soft Global Constraints

We study contractibility and its approximation for two very general classes of soft global constraints. We introduce a general formulation of decomposition-based soft constraints and provide a sufficient condition for contractibility and an approach to approximation. For edit-based soft constraints, we establish that the tightest contractible approximation cannot be expressed in edit-based terms, in general

The Lost Sheep: Experiences of Religious Gay Men in Havana, Cuba

The focus of the article is interviews with ten religious gay men in Havana. Interviews were conducted in 1999 and 2000. The men were from Catholic, Santeria, Protestant, and Pentecostal backgrounds. Common perceptions were that Santeria was the most welcoming religion to gays and that Pentecostalism was the least welcoming to gays. While many non-Catholics viewed the Catholic Church as welcoming, the gay Catholics in the study did not see the Church as welcoming, but they did tend to see it as more welcoming than Pentecostalism. Almost all the men in the study had come to reconcile their sexuality and their spirituality, but they did so through private reflection and prayer rather than through a gay religious community, or through a religious community that was welcoming to gays, or through a gay community that was interested in religion. Overall, the experience of being gay and religious involved a great deal of solitary reflection for the subjects