Quality of care and an HMO automated medical record

Issued as Annual progress report, Project no. G-36-62

Algorithmic information theory

This article is a brief guide to the field of algorithmic information theory (AIT), its underlying philosophy, and the most important concepts. AIT arises by mixing information theory and computation theory to obtain an objective and absolute notion of information in an individual object, and in so doing gives rise to an objective and robust notion of randomness of individual objects. This is in contrast to classical information theory that is based on random variables and communication, and has no bearing on information and randomness of individual objects. After a brief overview, the major subfields, applications, history, and a map of the field are presented

The Poetry of Logical Ideas: Towards a Mathematical Genealogy of Media Art

In this dissertation I chart a mathematical genealogy of media art, demonstrating that mathematical thought has had a significant influence on contemporary experimental moving image production. Rather than looking for direct cause and effect relationships between mathematics and the arts, I will instead examine how mathematical developments have acted as a cultural zeitgeist, an indirect, but significant, influence on the humanities and the arts. In particular, I will be narrowing the focus of this study to the influence mathematical thought has had on cinema (and by extension media art), given that mathematics lies comfortably between the humanities and sciences, and that cinema is the object par excellence of such a study, since cinema and media studies arrived at a time when the humanities and sciences were held by many to be mutually exclusive disciplines. It is also shown that many media scholars have been implicitly engaging with mathematical concepts without necessarily recognizing them as such. To demonstrate this, I examine many concepts from media studies that demonstrate or derive from mathematical concepts. For instance, Claude Shannon's mathematical model of communication is used to expand on Stuart Hall's cultural model, and the mathematical concept of the fractal is used to expand on Rosalind Krauss' argument that video is a medium that lends itself to narcissism. Given that the influence of mathematics on the humanities and the arts often occurs through a misuse or misinterpretation of mathematics, I mobilize the concept of a productive misinterpretation and argue that this type of misreading has the potential to lead to novel innovations within the humanities and the arts. In this dissertation, it is also established that there are many mathematical concepts that can be utilized by media scholars to better analyze experimental moving images. In particular, I explore the mathematical concepts of symmetry, infinity, fractals, permutations, the Axiom of Choice, and the algorithmic to moving images works by Hollis Frampton, Barbara Lattanzi, Dana Plays, T. Marie, and Isiah Medina, among others. It is my desire that this study appeal to scientists with an interest in cinema and media art, and to media theorists with an interest in experimental cinema and other contemporary moving image practices

Common Knowledge and Interactive Behaviors: A Survey

This paper surveys the notion of common knowledge taken from game theory and computer science. It studies and illustrates more generally the effects of interactive knowledge in economic and social problems. First of all, common knowledge is shown to be a central concept and often a necessary condition for coordination, equilibrium achievement, agreement, and consensus. We present how common knowledge can be practically generated, for example, by particular advertisements or leadership. Secondly, we prove that common knowledge can be harmful, essentially in various cooperation and negotiation problems, and more generally when there are con icts of interest. Finally, in some asymmetric relationships, common knowledge is shown to be preferable for some players, but not for all. The ambiguous welfare effects of higher-order knowledge on interactive behaviors leads us to analyze the role of decentralized communication in order to deal with dynamic or endogenous information structures.Interactive knowledge, common knowledge, information structure, communication.

The Collective Communication of Social Choice Messages

The research problem addressed in this dissertation is to develop a theory of collective communication. Collective communication is defined as social interaction mediated through messages whose production involves a collectivity. The focus of analysis is on social choice messages, messages that prescribe or proscribe the behavior of members of that collectivity. The theory developed here is used to describe the social choice messages necessary to realize common interests in specific economic environments and the collective communication systems necessary to communicate those messages in those environments. The theory of collective communication is developed in four steps. First, a mathematical theory of collective communication is derived from the unification of game theory and information theory. Building upon the work of von Neumann and Morgenstern, Shannon, Ashby and Conant, philosophical foundations are established and nineteen theorems are derived to predict the transmission of information in a basic game and in a metagame whose outcomes describe constraints to be imposed upon strategic behavior in the basic game. Second, this mathematical theory is formally interpreted as a social theory of collective communication. Third, these theorems are applied to a variety of political and social problems, including those of common property resource management, market failure, the provision of public goods, collective action and coordinated action. Finally, the empirical validity of this theory is tested against research on the development of property rights. The set of regulations and statutes governing mining activity in Nevada between 1858 and 1895 is studied using the techniques of content analysis and multiple linear regression analysis. The predicted relationship between the precision of mining law and the value of mine output is found to be strong, with R squares as high as 0.82347. The research instrument is determined to be reliable and the findings to be statistically significant at the 0.01 level. The evidence presented here is limited but sufficient to motivate the continued development of a unified theory of information and games and the use of mathematical modeling to study salient social problems in the collective communication of social choice messages

Glossarium BITri 2016 : Interdisciplinary Elucidation of Concepts, Metaphors, Theories and Problems Concerning Information

222 p.Terms included in this glossary recap some of the main concepts, theories, problems and metaphors concerning INFORMATION in all spheres of knowledge. This is the first edition of an ambitious enterprise covering at its completion all relevant notions relating to INFORMATION in any scientific context. As such, this glossariumBITri is part of the broader project BITrum, which is committed to the mutual understanding of all disciplines devoted to information across fields of knowledge and practic

Information in the knowledge acquisition process

The purpose of this paper is to propose an appropriate symbolic representation, as well as its metaphorical interpretation, to illustrate the special role of information in the knowledge acquisition process. Besides the literature review, this is a speculative study based on a symbolic and metaphorical point of view. The proposed symbolic representation was derived from the conceptual designation of information ‘as a flow’ and, accordingly, by the corresponding redrawing of the Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom (DIKW) pyramid. The knowledge acquisition process is symbolically represented by the growth of a 'tree of knowledge' which is planted on a 'data ground', filled with 'information sap' and lit by the rays of the 'sun of the mind', a new symbol of the concept of wisdom in the DIKW model. As indicated, a key concept of this metaphorical interpretation is the role of 'information sap' which rises from the roots of the 'tree of knowledge' to the top of the tree and it is recognized as an invisible link between 'world of data' and 'world of knowledge.' This concept is also proposed as a new symbolic representation of the DIKW model. On the basis of specific symbolic-metaphorical representation, this paper provides a relatively new concept of information which may help bridge observed gaps in the understanding of information in various scientific fields, as well as in its understanding as an objective or subjective phenomenon