Manipulation in group argument evaluation.

Given an argumentation framework and a group of agents, the individuals may have divergent opinions on the status of the arguments. If the group needs to reach a common po- sition on the argumentation framework, the question is how the individual evaluations can be mapped into a collective one. This problem has been recently investigated in [1]. In this paper, we study under which conditions these operators are Pareto optimal and whether they are manipulable.Collective decision making; Argumentation; Judgment aggregation; Social choice theory;

Manipulation in Group Argument Evaluation.

Given an argumentation framework and a group of agents, the individuals may have divergent opinions on the status of the arguments. If the group needsto reach a common position on the argumentation framework, the question is how the individual evaluations can be mapped into a collective one. Thisproblem has been recently investigated by Caminada and Pigozzi. In this paper, we investigate the behaviour of two of such operators from a socialchoice-theoretic point of view. In particular, we study under which conditions these operators are Pareto optimal and whether they are manipulable.Social choice theory; Judgment aggregation; Argumentation; Collective decision making;

Process mining techniques applied in industry

Internship Report presented as the partial requirement for obtaining a Master's degree in Data Science and Advanced Analytics, specialization in Business AnalyticsGiven the overview of today’s information era, several scientific fields related to data raised. Process Mining is relatively new and it aims to leverage merged techniques from two separate scientific areas: Business Process Management and Data Science. The main purpose of Process Mining is the discovery, monitoring and improvement of real processes. As a result, in the last few years, Process Mining has increased remarkably, and the importance of the process insights has become more and more relevant, directly proportional to the amount and quality of data that supports the analyses. As a Data Engineer Intern at Nokia, I had the opportunity to be involved in the development phase of two business cases, being part of a team that has the main objective of exploring and analyzing several business processes within the company leveraging Data Science techniques

Letter from the Conference Organizer

Pier Pigozzi writes to introduce the Spring 2013 conference, New Trends in Latin American Constitutionalism

Impunity for Snake Oil Merchants?: The Seventh Circuit Upholds the Class Action as a Vehicle for Consumer Protection

The class action is often the only way for victims of consumer fraud to pursue a remedy. Several federal circuit courts have recently adopted the heightened ascertainability requirement—a requirement that makes certifying a consumer class almost impossible. A plaintiff can only meet the heightened ascertainability requirement by showing that members of her proposed class can be identified in a reliable and administratively feasible way. This typically requires documentary proof of class membership. For classes made up of purchasers of deceptive low-cost products who have not kept their receipts, heightened ascertainability has served as an insurmountable barrier to certification. In Mullins v. Direct Digital LLC, the Seventh Circuit rejected the adoption of the heighted ascertainability requirement. The court held that nothing in Rule 23 mentioned or implied the requirement, and that Rule 23 and the court’s settled class certification analysis already adequately addressed the policy concerns motivating its adoption. In so holding, the court recognized the negative implications that heightened ascertainability would have on the consumer class action. The Seventh Circuit got it right in rejecting heightened ascertainability. This rule should be abandoned because it undercuts the core policy behind the class action: the vindication of the rights of a group of people who individually would be without effective strength to bring a corporate defendant to court at all. The Judicial Conference’s Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure should amend Rule 23 to codify the Seventh Circuit’s approach to class certification outlined in Mullins. Such an amendment would eliminate judicially created hurdles to class certification and preserve the class action as an instrument for consumer protection and deterrent against corporate wrongdoing

Impunity for Snake Oil Merchants?: The Seventh Circuit Upholds the Class Action as a Vehicle for Consumer Protection

The class action is often the only way for victims of consumer fraud to pursue a remedy. Several federal circuit courts have recently adopted the heightened ascertainability requirement—a requirement that makes certifying a consumer class almost impossible. A plaintiff can only meet the heightened ascertainability requirement by showing that members of her proposed class can be identified in a reliable and administratively feasible way. This typically requires documentary proof of class membership. For classes made up of purchasers of deceptive low-cost products who have not kept their receipts, heightened ascertainability has served as an insurmountable barrier to certification. In Mullins v. Direct Digital LLC, the Seventh Circuit rejected the adoption of the heighted ascertainability requirement. The court held that nothing in Rule 23 mentioned or implied the requirement, and that Rule 23 and the court’s settled class certification analysis already adequately addressed the policy concerns motivating its adoption. In so holding, the court recognized the negative implications that heightened ascertainability would have on the consumer class action. The Seventh Circuit got it right in rejecting heightened ascertainability. This rule should be abandoned because it undercuts the core policy behind the class action: the vindication of the rights of a group of people who individually would be without effective strength to bring a corporate defendant to court at all. The Judicial Conference’s Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure should amend Rule 23 to codify the Seventh Circuit’s approach to class certification outlined in Mullins. Such an amendment would eliminate judicially created hurdles to class certification and preserve the class action as an instrument for consumer protection and deterrent against corporate wrongdoing

Letter from the Conference Organizer

Pier Pigozzi writes to introduce the Spring 2013 conference, New Trends in Latin American Constitutionalism

Pareto Optimality and Strategy Proofness in Group Argument Evaluation (Extended Version)

An inconsistent knowledge base can be abstracted as a set of arguments and a defeat relation among them. There can be more than one consistent way to evaluate such an argumentation graph. Collective argument evaluation is the problem of aggregating the opinions of multiple agents on how a given set of arguments should be evaluated. It is crucial not only to ensure that the outcome is logically consistent, but also satisfies measures of social optimality and immunity to strategic manipulation. This is because agents have their individual preferences about what the outcome ought to be. In the current paper, we analyze three previously introduced argument-based aggregation operators with respect to Pareto optimality and strategy proofness under different general classes of agent preferences. We highlight fundamental trade-offs between strategic manipulability and social optimality on one hand, and classical logical criteria on the other. Our results motivate further investigation into the relationship between social choice and argumentation theory. The results are also relevant for choosing an appropriate aggregation operator given the criteria that are considered more important, as well as the nature of agents' preferences

Moving from a Legally Adequate Consent to a Morally Valid Consent: Using Rhetoric and Scientific and Technical Communication to Investigate Latino Understanding of an Informed Consent Conference

While there has been much research on informed consent generally, little has been done to explore the process with non-English-speaking immigrants. This project explores the informed consent conference for non-English-speaking Latinos. Rhetoric and scientific and technical communication will ground the analysis of the results