29,952 research outputs found
Median two person game theory and examples of its flexibility in applications
Probability distribution in two person game theor
Sequential Deliberation for Social Choice
In large scale collective decision making, social choice is a normative study
of how one ought to design a protocol for reaching consensus. However, in
instances where the underlying decision space is too large or complex for
ordinal voting, standard voting methods of social choice may be impractical.
How then can we design a mechanism - preferably decentralized, simple,
scalable, and not requiring any special knowledge of the decision space - to
reach consensus? We propose sequential deliberation as a natural solution to
this problem. In this iterative method, successive pairs of agents bargain over
the decision space using the previous decision as a disagreement alternative.
We describe the general method and analyze the quality of its outcome when the
space of preferences define a median graph. We show that sequential
deliberation finds a 1.208- approximation to the optimal social cost on such
graphs, coming very close to this value with only a small constant number of
agents sampled from the population. We also show lower bounds on simpler
classes of mechanisms to justify our design choices. We further show that
sequential deliberation is ex-post Pareto efficient and has truthful reporting
as an equilibrium of the induced extensive form game. We finally show that for
general metric spaces, the second moment of of the distribution of social cost
of the outcomes produced by sequential deliberation is also bounded
Predicting Motivations of Actions by Leveraging Text
Understanding human actions is a key problem in computer vision. However,
recognizing actions is only the first step of understanding what a person is
doing. In this paper, we introduce the problem of predicting why a person has
performed an action in images. This problem has many applications in human
activity understanding, such as anticipating or explaining an action. To study
this problem, we introduce a new dataset of people performing actions annotated
with likely motivations. However, the information in an image alone may not be
sufficient to automatically solve this task. Since humans can rely on their
lifetime of experiences to infer motivation, we propose to give computer vision
systems access to some of these experiences by using recently developed natural
language models to mine knowledge stored in massive amounts of text. While we
are still far away from fully understanding motivation, our results suggest
that transferring knowledge from language into vision can help machines
understand why people in images might be performing an action.Comment: CVPR 201
Flexible Decision Control in an Autonomous Trading Agent
An autonomous trading agent is a complex piece of software that must operate in a competitive economic environment and support a research agenda. We describe the structure of decision processes in the MinneTAC trading agent, focusing on the use of evaluators ĂąâŹâ configurable, composable modules for data analysis and prediction that are chained together at runtime to support agent decision-making. Through a set of examples, we show how this structure supports sales and procurement decisions, and how those decision processes can be modified in useful ways by changing evaluator configurations. To put this work in context, we also report on results of an informal survey of agent design approaches among the competitors in the Trading Agent Competition for Supply Chain Management (TAC SCM).autonomous trading agent;decision processes
Analysis of Dialogical Argumentation via Finite State Machines
Dialogical argumentation is an important cognitive activity by which agents
exchange arguments and counterarguments as part of some process such as
discussion, debate, persuasion and negotiation. Whilst numerous formal systems
have been proposed, there is a lack of frameworks for implementing and
evaluating these proposals. First-order executable logic has been proposed as a
general framework for specifying and analysing dialogical argumentation. In
this paper, we investigate how we can implement systems for dialogical
argumentation using propositional executable logic. Our approach is to present
and evaluate an algorithm that generates a finite state machine that reflects a
propositional executable logic specification for a dialogical argumentation
together with an initial state. We also consider how the finite state machines
can be analysed, with the minimax strategy being used as an illustration of the
kinds of empirical analysis that can be undertaken.Comment: 10 page
Behavioral Economics: Past, Present, Future
Behavioral economics increases the explanatory power of economics by providing it with
more realistic psychological foundations. This book consists of representative recent articles in
behavioral economics. This chapter is intended to provide an introduction to the approach and
methods of behavioral economics, and to some of its major findings, applications, and promising
new directions. It also seeks to fill some unavoidable gaps in the chaptersâ coverage of topics
Inflexibility of experts â Reality or myth? Quantifying the Einstellung effect in chess masters
How does the knowledge of experts affect their behaviour in situations that require unusual
methods of dealing? One possibility, loosely originating in research on creativity and skill
acquisition, is that an increase in expertise can lead to inflexibility of thought due to
automation of procedures. Yet another possibility, based on expertise research, is that
expertsâ knowledge leads to flexibility of thought. We tested these two possibilities in a series of experiments using the Einstellung (set) effect paradigm. Chess players tried to solve
problems that had both a familiar but non-optimal solution and a better but less familiar one.
The more familiar solution induced the Einstellung (set) effect even in experts, preventing them from finding the optimal solution. The presence of the non-optimal solution reduced experts' problem solving ability was reduced to about that of players three standard deviations lower in skill level by the presence of the non-optimal solution. Inflexibility of thought induced by prior knowledge (i.e., the blocking effect of the familiar solution) was shown by experts but the more expert they were, the less prone they were to the effect. Inflexibility of experts is both reality and myth. But the greater the level of expertise, the more of a myth it becomes
Experimental economics: Methods, problems and promise
The purpose of this paper is to discuss the growing importance of experimentation in economic analysis. We present a variety of economic issues that have been explored with laboratory techniques. We also address some common objections to experimentation, as well as some of the principal lessons that have been learned.
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