Related papers: Teaching decision theory proof strategies using a …
In a compound decision problem, consisting of $n$ statistically independent copies of the same problem to be solved under the sum of the individual losses, any reasonable compound decision rule $\delta$ satisfies a natural symmetry…
We introduce a scalable Bayesian preference learning method for identifying convincing arguments in the absence of gold-standard rat- ings or rankings. In contrast to previous work, we avoid the need for separate methods to perform quality…
Ensemble-based methods are highly popular approaches that increase the accuracy of a decision by aggregating the opinions of individual voters. The common point is to maximize accuracy; however, a natural limitation occurs if incremental…
Today mobile crowdsourcing platforms invite users to provide anonymous reviews about service experiences, yet many reviews are found biased to be extremely positive or negative. The existing methods find it difficult to learn from biased…
We can overcome uncertainty with uncertainty. Using randomness in our choices and in what we control, and hence in the decision making process, could potentially offset the uncertainty inherent in the environment and yield better outcomes.…
We apply classical statistical decision theory to a large class of treatment choice problems with partial identification. We show that, in a general class of problems with Gaussian likelihood, all decision rules are admissible; it is…
One of the most important aspects in any treatment of uncertain information is the rule of combination for updating the degrees of uncertainty. The theory of belief functions uses the Dempster rule to combine two belief functions defined by…
Computational and complexity theory are core components of the computer science curriculum, and in the vast majority of cases are taught using decision problems as the main paradigm. For experienced practitioners, decision problems are the…
We characterize the optimal reward functions (scoring rules) that incentivize an agent to acquire information and report it truthfully to the principal. The optimal scoring rules let the agent make a simple binary bet in single-dimensional…
Training Data Attribution (TDA) seeks to trace model predictions back to influential training examples, enhancing interpretability and safety. We formulate TDA as a Bayesian information-theoretic problem: subsets are scored by the…
A general challenge in statistics is prediction in the presence of multiple candidate models or learning algorithms. Model aggregation tries to combine all predictive distributions from individual models, which is more stable and flexible…
Crowdsourcing systems aggregate decisions of many people to help users quickly identify high-quality options, such as the best answers to questions or interesting news stories. A long-standing issue in crowdsourcing is how option quality…
We want to select the best systems out of a given set of systems (or rank them) with respect to their expected performance. The systems allow random observations only and we assume that the joint observation of the systems has a…
Selective classification is a powerful tool for automated decision-making in high-risk scenarios, allowing classifiers to act only when confident and abstain when uncertainty is high. Given a target accuracy, our goal is to minimize…
In transfer learning, we wish to make inference about a target population when we have access to data both from the distribution itself, and from a different but related source distribution. We introduce a flexible framework for transfer…
The ranking and selection problem is a popular framework in the simulation literature for studying optimal information collection. We study a version of this problem in which the simulation output for each design is normally distributed…
In order to interact intelligently with objects in the world, animals must first transform neural population responses into estimates of the dynamic, unknown stimuli which caused them. The Bayesian solution to this problem is known as a…
The analysis of decision making under uncertainty is closely related to the analysis of probabilistic inference. Indeed, much of the research into efficient methods for probabilistic inference in expert systems has been motivated by the…
The empirical risk minimization approach to data-driven decision making requires access to training data drawn under the same conditions as those that will be faced when the decision rule is deployed. However, in a number of settings, we…
We show that social learning is not useful in a model of team binary decision making by voting, where each vote carries equal weight. Specifically, we consider Bayesian binary hypothesis testing where agents have any…