SUPPORT OF MANAGERIAL DECISION MAKING BY TRANSDUCTIVE LEARNING

Transductive inference has been introduced as a novelparadigm towards building predictive classi¯cation modelsfrom empirical data. Such models are routinely employedto support decision making in, e.g., marketing, risk manage-ment and manufacturing. To that end, the characteristics ofthe new philosophy are reviewed and their implications fortypical decision problems are examined. The paper\u27s objec-tive is to explore the potential of transductive learning forcorporate planning. The analysis reveals two main factorsthat govern the applicability of transduction in business set-tings, decision scope and urgency. In a similar fashion, twomajor drivers for its e®ectiveness are identi¯ed and empir-ical experiments are undertaken to con¯rm their in°uence.The results evidence that transductive classi¯ers are wellsuperior to their inductive counterparts if their speci¯c ap-plication requirements are ful¯lled