English
Related papers

Related papers: Unstructuring User Preferences: Efficient Non-Para…

200 papers

The Random Utility Model (RUM) is the gold standard in describing the behavior of a population of consumers. The RUM operates under the assumption of transitivity in consumers' preference relationships, but the empirical literature has…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2024-06-21 Wilfried Youmbi

When faced with complex choices, users refine their own preference criteria as they explore the catalogue of options. In this paper we propose an approach to preference elicitation suited for this scenario. We extend Coactive Learning,…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2016-12-07 Stefano Teso , Paolo Dragone , Andrea Passerini

This paper presents an efficient preference elicitation framework for uncertain matroid optimization, where precise weight information is unavailable, but insights into possible weight values are accessible. The core innovation of our…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-26 Aditya Sai Ellendula , Arun K Pujari , Vikas Kumar , Venkateswara Rao Kagita

Whether the goal is to analyze voting behavior, locate facilities, or recommend products, the problem of translating between (ordinal) rankings and (numerical) utilities arises naturally in many contexts. This task is commonly approached by…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2026-02-03 Joshua Zeitlin , Corinna Coupette

Learning user preferences for products based on their past purchases or reviews is at the cornerstone of modern recommendation engines. One complication in this learning task is that some users are more likely to purchase products or review…

Information Retrieval · Computer Science 2023-03-08 Wanning Chen , Mohsen Bayati

Fashion preference is a fuzzy concept that depends on customer taste, prevailing norms in fashion product/style, henceforth used interchangeably, and a customer's perception of utility or fashionability, yet fashion e-retail relies on…

Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · Computer Science 2018-07-10 Vikram Garg , Girish Sathyanarayana , Sumit Borar , Aruna Rajan

In this work we are interested in the problems of supervised learning and variable selection when the input-output dependence is described by a nonlinear function depending on a few variables. Our goal is to consider a sparse nonparametric…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2012-08-14 Lorenzo Rosasco , Silvia Villa , Sofia Mosci , Matteo Santoro , Alessandro verri

Language model benchmarks are pervasive and computationally-efficient proxies for real-world performance. However, many recent works find that benchmarks often fail to predict real utility. Towards bridging this gap, we introduce benchmark…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-05-28 Marco Gutierrez , Xinyi Leng , Hannah Cyberey , Jonathan Richard Schwarz , Ahmed Alaa , Thomas Hartvigsen

In problems involving the allocation of a single non-disposable commodity, we study rules defined on a general domain of preferences requiring only that each preference exhibit a unique global maximum. Our focus is on rules that satisfy a…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2025-12-18 R. Pablo Arribillaga , Agustin G. Bonifacio

A long-standing question about consumer behavior is whether individuals' observed purchase decisions satisfy the revealed preference (RP) axioms of the utility maximization theory (UMT). Researchers using survey or experimental panel data…

Econometrics · Economics 2020-09-21 Victor H. Aguiar , Nail Kashaev

As large language models (LLMs) become integral to intelligent user interfaces (IUIs), their role as decision-making agents raises critical concerns about alignment. Although extensive research has addressed issues such as factuality, bias,…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-04-23 Anna Karnysheva , Christian Drescher , Dietrich Klakow

Multivariate functions emerge naturally in a wide variety of data-driven models. Popular choices are expressions in the form of basis expansions or neural networks. While highly effective, the resulting functions tend to be hard to…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-06-15 Jan Decuyper , Koen Tiels , Siep Weiland , Mark C. Runacres , Johan Schoukens

In this paper we propose efficient methods for elicitation of complexly structured preferences and utilize these in problems of decision making under (severe) uncertainty. Based on the general framework introduced in Jansen, Schollmeyer and…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2022-02-02 Christoph Jansen , Hannah Blocher , Thomas Augustin , Georg Schollmeyer

We study preferences estimated from finite choice experiments and provide sufficient conditions for convergence to a unique underlying "true" preference. Our conditions are weak, and therefore valid in a wide range of economic environments.…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2020-11-03 Christopher P. Chambers , Federico Echenique , Nicolas Lambert

Utilitarian algorithm configuration identifies a parameter setting for a given algorithm that maximizes a user's utility. Utility functions offer a theoretically well-grounded approach to optimizing decision-making under uncertainty and are…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-11-17 Devon Graham , Eros Rojas Velez , Kevin Leyton-Brown

We introduce normalized nonnegative models (NNM) for explorative data analysis. NNMs are partial convexifications of models from probability theory. We demonstrate their value at the example of item recommendation. We show that NNM-based…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2015-11-17 Cyril Stark

We use decision theory to compare variants of differential privacy from the perspective of prospective study participants. We posit the existence of a preference ordering on the set of potential consequences that study participants can…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2023-10-11 Nitin Kohli , Michael Carl Tschantz

Reward modeling is crucial for aligning large language models with human preferences, yet current approaches lack a principled mathematical framework for leveraging ordinal preference data. When human annotators provide graded preferences…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-04 Amirhossein Afsharrad , Ruida Zhou , Luca Viano , Sanjay Lall , Mohammad Ghavamzadeh

Preference learning from human feedback has the ability to align generative models with the needs of end-users. Human feedback is costly and time-consuming to obtain, which creates demand for data-efficient query selection methods. This…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-18 Guy Schacht , Ziyad Sheebaelhamd , Riccardo De Santi , Mojmír Mutný , Andreas Krause

The ability to uncover preferences from choices is fundamental for both positive economics and welfare analysis. Overwhelming evidence shows that choice is stochastic, which has given rise to random utility models as the dominant paradigm…

General Economics · Economics 2018-11-07 Carlos Alos-Ferrer , Ernst Fehr , Nick Netzer