08421 Abstracts Collection -- Uncertainty Management in Information Systems

From October 12 to 17, 2008 the Dagstuhl Seminar 08421 \u27`Uncertainty Management in Information Systems \u27\u27 was held in Schloss Dagstuhl~--~Leibniz Center for Informatics. The abstracts of the plenary and session talks given during the seminar as well as those of the shown demos are put together in this paper

Helping the man in the middle: assessing and training referee performance

This thesis describes an applied programme of research with the English Rugby Football Union (RFU) national panel of referees. Referee performance can have a critical impact on the outcomes of games and as a consequence the future status of the clubs & players concerned. Surprisingly, given the importance of referees, access to scientific support for these individuals is almost non-existent. Furthermore, there are only a handful of empirical investigations that have explored refereeing performance and none that has attempted to train sports officials. Accordingly, this programme of research set out to understand, operationalise and train the key aspects of referee performance. Using a multi-modal approach the first investigation used referee performance profiling and content analyses of three sources of literature to establish the key areas of referee performance. The Cornerstones Performance Model of Refereeing emerged, overarched by the psychological characteristics of excellence; featuring knowledge and application of the law; contextual judgment; personality and management skills; and fitness and positioning. The model was subsequently adopted by the RFU to structure the applied support programme and guide the development and selection of the English RFU referees. A naturalistic approach was adopted, focussing primarily on the decision-making aspects of the performance model. A video based, law-application assessment tool revealed surprisingly low levels of accuracy amongst referees and their support groups. Accordingly, a training programme was designed to reinforce accurate and coherent interpretations. A group of national panel referees watched videotaped scenarios taken from premier league games, showing 5 sets of 5 tackles, in each case with an expert providing the interpretation of the correct decision. All referee groups improved their performance from pre to posttest, with the lowest ranked referees showing significant improvements. However, as the performance model presents, referee DM is influenced by many factors beyond a simple application of the law. Accordingly, the final investigation explored the factors that change the game context and how they influence rugby-union referees management of the game. Following the nominal group technique, two groups of referees listed contextual factors that they felt might affect their decisions during a game. Individual ratings of this list with both groups revealed the most important factors to be the "temper of the game," "the level of player respect/rapport," "position on pitch," "scoreline," and the "time left in the game." To verify these factors a think-aloud protocol was conducted with three international referees, assessing how they weigh their decisions based on the context and how this affects their management of the game. The results suggest that elite referees use "preventative refereeing" to help maintain the natural flow to a game. Finally, the implications of this research programme are discussed in the light of expediting the development of high performance referees in open team sports

The Influence of Experimental and Computational Economics: Economics Back to the Future of Social Sciences

Economics has been a most puzzling science, namely since the neoclassical revolution defined the legitimate procedures for theorisation and quantification. Its epistemology has based on farce: decisive tests are not applied on dare predictions. As a consequence, estimation has finally been replaced by simulation, and empirical tests have been substituted by non-disciplined exercises of comparison of models with reality. Furthermore, the core concepts of economics defy the normally accepted semantics and tend to establish meanings of their own. One of the obvious instances is the notion of rationality, which has been generally equated with the apt use of formal logic or the ability to apply econometric estimation as a rule of thumb for daily life. In that sense, rationality is defined devoid of content, as alien to the construction of significance and reference by reason and social communication. The contradictory use of simulacra and automata, by John von Neumann and Herbert Simon, was a response to this escape of economic models from reality, suggesting that markets could be conceived of as complex institutions. But most mainstream economists did not understand or did not accept these novelties, and the empirical inquiry or the realistic representation of the action of agents and of their social interaction remained a minor domain of economics, and was essentially ignored by canonical theorizing. The argument of the current paper is based on a survey and discussion of the twin contributions of experimental and computational economics to these issues. Although mainly arising out of the mainstream, these emergent fields of economics generate challenging heuristics as well as new empirical results that defy orthodoxy. Their contributions both to the definition of the social meanings of rationality and to the definition of a new brand of inductive economics are discussed.

Paul the bigot? Reading the Cretan quotation of Titus 1:12 in light of relevance theory

According to prevalent readings of Titus 1:12, the author sympathizes with the statement, “Cretans are always liars, evil brutes, lazy gluttons.” Such conventional, prima facie interpretations are unsustainable when examined in light of Relevance Theory (RT). Although its application to Biblical Studies has been limited, the Theory provides crucial insights for both evaluating previous interpretations and for guiding historically and linguistically responsible readings. I argue that key insights of RT illuminate critical evidence for properly interpreting the Cretan quotation of Titus 1:12. I aim to both clear an interpretive impasse regarding this problematic text and demonstrate a relevance-guided biblical hermeneutic. The Introduction discusses representative interpretations and their inadequacies, then it outlines the promise of RT for supporting linguistically sound biblical interpretation. Each subsequent chapter focuses respectively on three pivotal insights: 1) the inferential nature of communication, 2) the role of the hearer in communication, and 3) the non-propositional dimensions of communication. I describe the insight in detail and demonstrate the impact of its application by both evaluating representative interpretations and offering a fresh interpretation of the passage in light of RT. The Conclusion summarizes the main contributions and implications of my thesis. These include a practical application of RT fundamentals to Biblical Studies; a linguistically-grounded examination of Titus and critique of existing secondary literature; a proposal regarding the letter’s historic message—namely, that it exposed rather than endorsed bigotry in the church; and an invitation to reassess the canonical esteem of Titus

Text-image synergy for multimodal retrieval and annotation

Text and images are the two most common data modalities found on the Internet. Understanding the synergy between text and images, that is, seamlessly analyzing information from these modalities may be trivial for humans, but is challenging for software systems. In this dissertation we study problems where deciphering text-image synergy is crucial for finding solutions. We propose methods and ideas that establish semantic connections between text and images in multimodal contents, and empirically show their effectiveness in four interconnected problems: Image Retrieval, Image Tag Refinement, Image-Text Alignment, and Image Captioning. Our promising results and observations open up interesting scopes for future research involving text-image data understanding.Text and images are the two most common data modalities found on the Internet. Understanding the synergy between text and images, that is, seamlessly analyzing information from these modalities may be trivial for humans, but is challenging for software systems. In this dissertation we study problems where deciphering text-image synergy is crucial for finding solutions. We propose methods and ideas that establish semantic connections between text and images in multimodal contents, and empirically show their effectiveness in four interconnected problems: Image Retrieval, Image Tag Refinement, Image-Text Alignment, and Image Captioning. Our promising results and observations open up interesting scopes for future research involving text-image data understanding.Text und Bild sind die beiden häufigsten Arten von Inhalten im Internet. Während es für Menschen einfach ist, gerade aus dem Zusammenspiel von Text- und Bildinhalten Informationen zu erfassen, stellt diese kombinierte Darstellung von Inhalten Softwaresysteme vor große Herausforderungen. In dieser Dissertation werden Probleme studiert, für deren Lösung das Verständnis des Zusammenspiels von Text- und Bildinhalten wesentlich ist. Es werden Methoden und Vorschläge präsentiert und empirisch bewertet, die semantische Verbindungen zwischen Text und Bild in multimodalen Daten herstellen. Wir stellen in dieser Dissertation vier miteinander verbundene Text- und Bildprobleme vor: • Bildersuche. Ob Bilder anhand von textbasierten Suchanfragen gefunden werden, hängt stark davon ab, ob der Text in der Nähe des Bildes mit dem der Anfrage übereinstimmt. Bilder ohne textuellen Kontext, oder sogar mit thematisch passendem Kontext, aber ohne direkte Übereinstimmungen der vorhandenen Schlagworte zur Suchanfrage, können häufig nicht gefunden werden. Zur Abhilfe schlagen wir vor, drei Arten von Informationen in Kombination zu nutzen: visuelle Informationen (in Form von automatisch generierten Bildbeschreibungen), textuelle Informationen (Stichworte aus vorangegangenen Suchanfragen), und Alltagswissen. • Verbesserte Bildbeschreibungen. Bei der Objekterkennung durch Computer Vision kommt es des Öfteren zu Fehldetektionen und Inkohärenzen. Die korrekte Identifikation von Bildinhalten ist jedoch eine wichtige Voraussetzung für die Suche nach Bildern mittels textueller Suchanfragen. Um die Fehleranfälligkeit bei der Objekterkennung zu minimieren, schlagen wir vor Alltagswissen einzubeziehen. Durch zusätzliche Bild-Annotationen, welche sich durch den gesunden Menschenverstand als thematisch passend erweisen, können viele fehlerhafte und zusammenhanglose Erkennungen vermieden werden. • Bild-Text Platzierung. Auf Internetseiten mit Text- und Bildinhalten (wie Nachrichtenseiten, Blogbeiträge, Artikel in sozialen Medien) werden Bilder in der Regel an semantisch sinnvollen Positionen im Textfluss platziert. Wir nutzen dies um ein Framework vorzuschlagen, in dem relevante Bilder ausgesucht werden und mit den passenden Abschnitten eines Textes assoziiert werden. • Bildunterschriften. Bilder, die als Teil von multimodalen Inhalten zur Verbesserung der Lesbarkeit von Texten dienen, haben typischerweise Bildunterschriften, die zum Kontext des umgebenden Texts passen. Wir schlagen vor, den Kontext beim automatischen Generieren von Bildunterschriften ebenfalls einzubeziehen. Üblicherweise werden hierfür die Bilder allein analysiert. Wir stellen die kontextbezogene Bildunterschriftengenerierung vor. Unsere vielversprechenden Beobachtungen und Ergebnisse eröffnen interessante Möglichkeiten für weitergehende Forschung zur computergestützten Erfassung des Zusammenspiels von Text- und Bildinhalten

A comparative analysis of academic literacy specifications for a standardised test and academic literacy requirements for reading and writing in a range of disciplinary contexts

Includes bibliographical referencesStandardised testing gained prominence in the South African higher education sector in the last decade, largely as a means of providing information to identify students who might require additional academic support and for placements onto appropriate higher education programmes of study. This study explored academic literacy as a construct for standardised tests in comparison with the kinds of literacies required for reading and writing for various subjects across diploma programmes. The purpose of this study was to determine whether alignment between the academic literacy test specifications and reading and writing practices in and across diploma subjects would support the claim that generic standardised tests are appropriate for all subjects and fields of study. Theoretical approaches to standardised testing and academic literacies formed the backdrop to frame the study and analyse the findings. The multiple-case study approach was used to explore the reading and writing practices across various diploma subjects, using semi structured interviews and document analysis for data generation. The test specifications of a standardised test served as the interview protocol, as well as the analytic codes for interview and document data that were analysed by means of thematic coding and content analysis. The findings revealed two distinct content representations in different subjects, that is text-dominant and visual literacy-dominant orientations that influenced the practice and application of different literacies, academic literacy being but one of an array of literacies. Conclusions based on the data and findings suggest that while academic literacy as a construct is integral to knowledge acquisition in academia, disciplinary literacies have a profound presence and should be accommodated in standardised testing to ensure that what is tested resonates with subject literacies. It is argued that alignment of test specifications and reading and writing practices in subjects would render tests and test results valid for appropriate use

Persuasion and Manipulation: Relevance Across Multiple Audiences

A speaker who is addressing multiple audiences has split intentions. In order to derive the optimal benefit toward accomplishing her intentions, the speaker crafts her utterance to be relevant to her various audiences in different ways and to differing degrees. Similarly, the hearer will infer meaning based largely on how much he thinks that the speaker intended her utterance to be relevant to him, while also considering how the utterance may have been intended to be relevant to others. The goal of this paper is to describe how the presence of multiple audiences affects both the speaker’s formation of an utterance and the hearer’s interpretation of it. I particularly focus on utterances that are aimed at persuading or manipulating the speaker’s various audiences. Using the framework of Relevance Theory (Sperber and Wilson 1986, 1995), I analyze a hearing in which eight bank CEOs testified before the US House Committee on Financial Services regarding how they used money that the government had invested in their banks in the midst of a severe financial crisis. I show that when communicating to multiple audiences, the speaker’s utterance is frequently less than fully ostensified to his various audiences. I conclude that Relevance Theory can be used to explain communicative stimuli that are less than fully ostensified by making a modification to the Relevance Theoretic notion of the presumption of optimal relevance to account for such cases of scalar ostension