On Cognitive Preferences and the Plausibility of Rule-based Models

It is conventional wisdom in machine learning and data mining that logical models such as rule sets are more interpretable than other models, and that among such rule-based models, simpler models are more interpretable than more complex ones. In this position paper, we question this latter assumption by focusing on one particular aspect of interpretability, namely the plausibility of models. Roughly speaking, we equate the plausibility of a model with the likeliness that a user accepts it as an explanation for a prediction. In particular, we argue that, all other things being equal, longer explanations may be more convincing than shorter ones, and that the predominant bias for shorter models, which is typically necessary for learning powerful discriminative models, may not be suitable when it comes to user acceptance of the learned models. To that end, we first recapitulate evidence for and against this postulate, and then report the results of an evaluation in a crowd-sourcing study based on about 3.000 judgments. The results do not reveal a strong preference for simple rules, whereas we can observe a weak preference for longer rules in some domains. We then relate these results to well-known cognitive biases such as the conjunction fallacy, the representative heuristic, or the recogition heuristic, and investigate their relation to rule length and plausibility.Comment: V4: Another rewrite of section on interpretability to clarify focus on plausibility and relation to interpretability, comprehensibility, and justifiabilit

La Salle College Summer Bulletin 1982

Issued for La Salle College Summer 1982https://digitalcommons.lasalle.edu/course_catalogs/1128/thumbnail.jp

Quantitative Legal Prediction--or--How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Start Preparing for the Data-Driven Future of the Legal Services Industry

Welcome to law\u27s information revolution-revolution already in progress

La Salle College Summer School Bulletin 1979

Issued for La Salle College Summer 1979https://digitalcommons.lasalle.edu/course_catalogs/1119/thumbnail.jp

Liberty and Property in the Patent Law

Patents have seldom troubled civil libertarians. A specialized form of property, patents seemed pertinent to the technologies of traditional industry but little else. Patent instruments offered their readers mere technical documentation; patent cases presented no more than the mapping of a text onto an instantiated artifact; patent policy was principally oriented toward economic optimization of the length and scope of protection. Unbound from technology, contemporary patent law now seems a more robust discipline. Modern patent instruments appropriate a diverse array of techniques that span the entire range of human endeavor. Patent claims, cut loose from physical moorings, have grown more abstract and oriented toward human behavior. We have yet to realize fully the consequences of postindustrial patenting, but the potential impact of the patent law upon personal liberties is becoming more apparent and more worthy of concern. Although the principles of the patent canon demonstrate sufficient flexibility to regulate uses of such inventions as software, business methods, and genetic fragments, they persist in bearing little regard for civil rights. The private rule making, made possible through the patent law, holds the potential to impinge upon individual liberties in ways not previously considered possible

La Salle College Summer School Bulletin 1979

Issued for La Salle College Summer 1979https://digitalcommons.lasalle.edu/course_catalogs/1119/thumbnail.jp

Latest technologies in criminal investigation (testing of foreign practices in Ukraine)

The aim of the article was to identify a set of innovative technologies in the field of investigation of crimes that can be tested in Ukraine. The leading research methods were the method of comparison, observation and comparative method. The activities of law enforcement agencies in the field of combating crime and ensuring the introduction of innovative technologies in the investigation of crimes were analyzed in the course of this research. It is substantiated that Ukraine is going through high-quality reform and legislative innovations, taking into account the best world practices. It is concluded that it is necessary to improve new sections of forensic science — digital forensics and develop a Strategy for investigating crimes in the digital age. These actions will promote the integration of the latest advances in science and technology into criminology, the development of certain theoretical positions, and optimize the detection and investigation of crimes. Further research will be based on the gradual introduction of positive European experience in this area

Classifiers for modeling of mineral potential

[Extract] Classification and allocation of land-use is a major policy objective in most countries. Such an undertaking, however, in the face of competing demands from different stakeholders, requires reliable information on resources potential. This type of information enables policy decision-makers to estimate socio-economic benefits from different possible land-use types and then to allocate most suitable land-use. The potential for several types of resources occurring on the earth's surface (e.g., forest, soil, etc.) is generally easier to determine than those occurring in the subsurface (e.g., mineral deposits, etc.). In many situations, therefore, information on potential for subsurface occurring resources is not among the inputs to land-use decision-making [85]. Consequently, many potentially mineralized lands are alienated usually to, say, further exploration and exploitation of mineral deposits. Areas with mineral potential are characterized by geological features associated genetically and spatially with the type of mineral deposits sought. The term 'mineral deposits' means .accumulations or concentrations of one or more useful naturally occurring substances, which are otherwise usually distributed sparsely in the earth's crust. The term 'mineralization' refers to collective geological processes that result in formation of mineral deposits. The term 'mineral potential' describes the probability or favorability for occurrence of mineral deposits or mineralization. The geological features characteristic of mineralized land, which are called recognition criteria, are spatial objects indicative of or produced by individual geological processes that acted together to form mineral deposits. Recognition criteria are sometimes directly observable; more often, their presence is inferred from one or more geographically referenced (or spatial) datasets, which are processed and analyzed appropriately to enhance, extract, and represent the recognition criteria as spatial evidence or predictor maps. Mineral potential mapping then involves integration of predictor maps in order to classify areas of unique combinations of spatial predictor patterns, called unique conditions [51] as either barren or mineralized with respect to the mineral deposit-type sought