Related papers: Vague Knowledge: Evidence from Analyst Reports
Why is language vague? Vagueness may be explained and rationalized if it can be shown that vague language is more useful to speaker and hearer than precise language. In a well-known paper, Lipman proposes a game-theoretic account of…
Senders of messages prefer to communicate uncertainty verbally (e.g., something is likely to happen) rather than numerically (such as 75%), leaving receivers with imprecise information. While it is well established that receivers translate…
People vary in their ability to make accurate predictions about the future. Prior studies have shown that some individuals can predict the outcome of future events with consistently better accuracy. This leads to a natural question: what…
Why is ordinary language vague? We argue that in contexts in which a cooperative speaker is not perfectly informed about the world, the use of vague expressions can offer an optimal tradeoff between truthfulness (Gricean Quality) and…
I relax the standard assumptions of transitivity and partition structure in economic models of information to formalize vague knowledge: non-transitive indistinguishability over states. I show that vague knowledge, while failing to…
Theoretically as well as experimentally it is investigated how people represent their knowledge in order to make decisions or to share their knowledge with others. Experiment 1 probes into the ways how people 6ather information about the…
Probabilistic forecasts are becoming more and more available. How should they be used and communicated? What are the obstacles to their use in practice? I review experience with five problems where probabilistic forecasting played an…
_Uncertainty expressions_ such as "probably" or "highly unlikely" are pervasive in human language. While prior work has established that there is population-level agreement in terms of how humans quantitatively interpret these expressions,…
There is substantial variability in the expectations that communication partners bring into interactions, creating the potential for misunderstandings. To directly probe these gaps and our ability to overcome them, we propose a…
An agent may strategically employ a vague message to mislead an audience's belief about the state of the world, but this may cause the agent to feel guilt or negatively impact how the audience perceives the agent. Using a novel experimental…
Communicating forecast uncertainty effectively is a persistent challenge in predictive endeavours such as weather forecasting. This paper explores the application of possibility theory as a complementary approach to traditional probability…
In the area of computer science focusing on creating machines that can engage on behaviors that humans consider intelligent. The ability to create intelligent machines has intrigued humans since ancient times and today with the advent of…
The established language for statistical testing --- significance levels, power, and p-values --- is overly complicated and deceptively conclusive. Even teachers of statistics and scientists who use statistics misinterpret the results of…
Strategic communication often relies on anchors observed by the sender but not by the receiver. An analyst may report against a proprietary valuation model, an auditor against an internal score, a manager against an accounting estimate, or…
Large Language Models (LLMs) demonstrate partial forecasting competence across social, political, and economic events. Yet, their predictive ability varies sharply with domain structure and prompt framing. We investigate how forecasting…
Lexical ambiguity is widespread in language, allowing for the reuse of economical word forms and therefore making language more efficient. If ambiguous words cannot be disambiguated from context, however, this gain in efficiency might make…
Rational speakers are supposed to know what they know and what they do not know, and to generate expressions matching the strength of evidence. In contrast, it is still a challenge for current large language models to generate corresponding…
Ambiguity, an information state where multiple interpretations are plausible, is a common challenge in visual analytics (VA) systems. We discuss lessons learned from a case study designing VA tools for Canadian avalanche forecasters.…
With the rise of voice assistants and an increase in mobile search usage, natural language has become an important query language. So far, most of the current systems are not able to process these queries because of the vagueness and…
Discourse signals are often implicit, leaving it up to the interpreter to draw the required inferences. At the same time, discourse is embedded in a social context, meaning that interpreters apply their own assumptions and beliefs when…