Curvilinearity, covariance, and regularity in perceptual groups

AbstractA curvilinear pattern among a series of visual items (e.g., dots) can be regarded as a kind of probabilistic inference, in which each consecutive angle, regarded independently, is more nearly collinear than would be expected by chance alone. This paper investigates judgments of curvilinearity as a function of the joint distribution of successive inter-dot angles. Subjects were asked to classify 4 and 5-dot configurations as having been generated by a curvilinear generating process, vs independently. Their results are distributed as a gaussian over the inter-dot angles with mean 0 dog (collinear), with a negative correlation between successive angles, but negligible correlation between non-successive angles. This suggests that curvilinearity is evaluated in a 4-dot window moving along the chain of dots, evaluating collinearity and smoothness but ignoring higher-order relationships. Moreover, the probabilistic model provides a remarkably precise numeric prediction of the magnitude of the correlation. Subjects also showed a reliable preference for equal spacing of dots along the virtual curve

Optimizing Restaurant Reservation Scheduling

We consider a yield-management approach to determine whether a restaurant should accept or reject a pending reservation request. This approach was examined by Bossert (2009), where the decision for each request is evaluated by an approximate dynamic program (ADP) that bases its decision on a realization of future demand. This model only considers assigning requests to their desired time slot. We expand Bossert\u27s ADP model to incorporate an element of flexibility that allows requests to be assigned to a time slot that differs from the customer\u27s initially requested time. To estimate the future seat utilization given a particular decision, a new heuristic is presented which evaluates time-slot/table assignments based on the expected number of unused seats likely to result from a given assignment. When compared against naive seating models, the proposed model produced average gains in seat utilization of 25%

Toward a Taxonomy and Computational Models of Abnormalities in Images

The human visual system can spot an abnormal image, and reason about what makes it strange. This task has not received enough attention in computer vision. In this paper we study various types of atypicalities in images in a more comprehensive way than has been done before. We propose a new dataset of abnormal images showing a wide range of atypicalities. We design human subject experiments to discover a coarse taxonomy of the reasons for abnormality. Our experiments reveal three major categories of abnormality: object-centric, scene-centric, and contextual. Based on this taxonomy, we propose a comprehensive computational model that can predict all different types of abnormality in images and outperform prior arts in abnormality recognition.Comment: To appear in the Thirtieth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI 2016

The Costs of Tax Policy Uncertainty And the Need for Tax Reform

The American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 (ATRA, P.L. 112-240) may be more significant for what it does not do than for what it does. Hopes for a ‘‘grand bargain’’ were not realized. In fact, ATRA does (almost) nothing to address the major fiscal problems that the United States continues to face. No one seems pleased with ATRA. Noticeably absent were the self-congratulations among members of Congress that usually accompany the passage of significant legislation — and for good reason. Even the bill’s title leaves something to be desired. The ‘‘Act of 2012’’ was not passed by Congress until 2013. The primary focus here is not on the broader merits or demerits of ATRA, but rather on the issue of tax policy uncertainty. The fiscal cliff represented an extreme case of (manufactured) policy uncertainty. A growing body of research suggests that policy uncertainty imposes substantial economic costs in and of itself. ATRA substantially lessened U.S. tax policy uncertainty over the very short term by, for the most part, making permanent the Bush tax cuts. However, all is not well. Policy uncertainty remains high. Under ATRA, added revenue will come from taxpayers at the top of the income distribution, but that will barely make a dent in the deficits that the United States has been running. Based on projections from the Congressional Budget Office, the Joint Committee on Taxation and the Office of Management and Budget, Veronique de Rugy shows that (over the next 10 years) ATRA is expected to add $332 billion in spending and$620 billion in added revenues. By contrast, projected deficit spending over the same 10 years is order of magnitudes larger than the projected deficit reductions from ATRA.2 Astrong recovery from the Great Recession would be a big help, but major structural problems would still remain

The Costs of Tax Policy Uncertainty And the Need for Tax Reform

The American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 (ATRA, P.L. 112-240) may be more significant for what it does not do than for what it does. Hopes for a ‘‘grand bargain’’ were not realized. In fact, ATRA does (almost) nothing to address the major fiscal problems that the United States continues to face. No one seems pleased with ATRA. Noticeably absent were the self-congratulations among members of Congress that usually accompany the passage of significant legislation — and for good reason. Even the bill’s title leaves something to be desired. The ‘‘Act of 2012’’ was not passed by Congress until 2013. The primary focus here is not on the broader merits or demerits of ATRA, but rather on the issue of tax policy uncertainty. The fiscal cliff represented an extreme case of (manufactured) policy uncertainty. A growing body of research suggests that policy uncertainty imposes substantial economic costs in and of itself. ATRA substantially lessened U.S. tax policy uncertainty over the very short term by, for the most part, making permanent the Bush tax cuts. However, all is not well. Policy uncertainty remains high. Under ATRA, added revenue will come from taxpayers at the top of the income distribution, but that will barely make a dent in the deficits that the United States has been running. Based on projections from the Congressional Budget Office, the Joint Committee on Taxation and the Office of Management and Budget, Veronique de Rugy shows that (over the next 10 years) ATRA is expected to add $332 billion in spending and$620 billion in added revenues. By contrast, projected deficit spending over the same 10 years is order of magnitudes larger than the projected deficit reductions from ATRA.2 Astrong recovery from the Great Recession would be a big help, but major structural problems would still remain

Superoperator Analysis of Entanglement in a Four-Qubit Cluster State

In this paper we utilize superoperator formalism to explore the entanglement evolution of four-qubit cluster states in a number of decohering environments. A four-qubit cluster state is a resource for the performance of an arbitrary single logical qubit rotation via measurement based cluster state quantum computation. We are specifically interested in the relationship between entanglement evolution and the fidelity with which the arbitrary single logical qubit rotation can be implemented in the presence of decoherence as this will have important experimental ramifications. We also note the exhibition of entanglement sudden death (ESD) and ask how severely its onset affects the utilization of the cluster state as a means of implementing an arbitrary single logical qubit rotation.Comment: 9 pages, 9 composite figures, presentation of results completely rewritte