Related papers: Knowing when to stop
The selection process of proposals is a crucial component of scientific progress and innovations. Limited resources must be allocated in the most effective way to maximise advancements and the production of new knowledge, especially as it…
Over the last few decades, the nature of scientific research has changed in response to external influences. Firstly, powerful networked computers have become a standard tool. Secondly, society presses ever harder for research to deliver…
This paper presents a general framework about what is a decision problem. Our motivation is related to the fact that decision analysis and operational research are structured (as disciplines) around classes of methods, while instead we…
Scientific knowledge and advances are a cornerstone of modern society. They improve our understanding of the world we live in and help us navigate global challenges including emerging infectious diseases, climate change and the biodiversity…
The advancement of various fields of science depends on the actions of individual scientists via the peer review process. The referees' work patterns and stochastic nature of decision making both relate to the particular features of…
Scientists pursue collective knowledge, but they also seek personal recognition from their peers. When scientists decide whether or not to work on a big new problem, they weigh the potential rewards of a major discovery against the costs of…
Scientific software projects evolve rapidly in their initial development phase, yet at the end of a funding period, the completion of a research project, thesis, or publication, further engagement in the project may slow down or cease…
Future energy systems are subject to various uncertain influences. As resilient systems they should maintain a constantly high operational performance whatever happens. We explore different levels and time scales of decision making in…
Sir, We write as senior scientists about a problem vital to the scientific enterprise and prosperity. Nowadays, funding is a lengthy and complex business. First, universities themselves must approve all proposals for submission. Funding…
A decision is an act or event of decision taking. Decision making always includes decision taking, the latter not involving significant exchanges with non-deciding agents. A decision outcome is a piece of storable information constituting…
In many situations, the decision maker observes items in sequence and needs to determine whether or not to retain a particular item immediately after it is observed. Any decision rule creates a set of items that are selected. We consider…
It is the role of the scientific community to provide for the knowledge of scientific facts and technical capabilities as a background for political decision-making. The reasons are given why governments are sometimes not ready to accept…
Decision-makers abhor uncertainty, and it is certainly true that the less there is of it the better. However, recognizing that uncertainty is part of the equation, particularly for deciding on environmental policy, is a prerequisite for…
Machines are being increasingly used in decision-making processes, resulting in the realization that decisions need explanations. Unfortunately, an increasing number of these deployed models are of a 'black-box' nature where the reasoning…
There are both technical and social issues regarding the design of sustainable scientific software. Scientists want continuously evolving systems that capture the most recent knowledge while developers and architects want sufficiently…
As we know, there is a controversy about the decision making under risk between economists and psychologists. We discuss to build a unified theory of risky choice, which would explain both of compensatory and non-compensatory theories. For…
For a variety of inter-related cultural, organizational, and political reasons, progress in climate science and the actual solution of scientific problems in this field have moved at a much slower rate than would normally be possible. Not…
Decision-making is a key software engineering skill. Developers constantly make choices throughout the software development process, from requirements to implementation. While prior work has studied developer decision-making, the choices…
The energy system studies include a wide range of issues from short term (e.g. real-time, hourly, daily and weekly operating decisions) to long term horizons (e.g. planning or policy making). The decision making chain is fed by input…
Doing research is fighting, what any other thing the human being could do? Fight against powers or to get powers, that depends on us. Science can be a revolution or deadlocked idleness. Still waters, without hitting the stones along their…