Related papers: Maximally Random Sortition
Recommendations based on behavioral data may be faced with ambiguous statistical evidence. We consider the case of association rules, relevant e.g.~for query and product recommendations. For example: Suppose that a customer belongs to…
Sequential sampling occurs when the entire population is not known in advance and data are obtained one at a time or in groups of units. This manuscript proposes a new algorithm to sequentially select a balanced sample. The algorithm…
We consider the problem of deciding on sampling strategy, in particular sampling design. We propose a risk measure, whose minimizing value guides the choice. The method makes use of a superpopulation model and takes into account uncertainty…
The Constitutionally mandated task of assigning Congressional seats to the various U.S. States proportional to their represented populations ("according to their numbers") has engendered much contention, but rather less consensus. Using the…
The scientific method relies on the iterated processes of inference and inquiry. The inference phase consists of selecting the most probable models based on the available data; whereas the inquiry phase consists of using what is known about…
This paper considers the scenario in which there are multiple institutions, each with a limited capacity for candidates, and candidates, each with preferences over the institutions. A central entity evaluates the utility of each candidate…
Aggregating agent preferences into a collective decision is an important step in many problems (e.g., hiring, elections, peer review) and across areas of computer science (e.g., reinforcement learning, recommender systems). As Social Choice…
Maximum likelihood estimation of energy-based models is a challenging problem due to the intractability of the log-likelihood gradient. In this work, we propose learning both the energy function and an amortized approximate sampling…
The problem of determining the joint probability distributions for correlated random variables with pre-specified marginals is considered. When the joint distribution satisfying all the required conditions is not unique, the "most unbiased"…
The persistence probability is a statistical index that has been proposed to detect one or more communities embedded in a network. Even though its definition is straightforward, e.g, the probability that a random walker remains in a group…
In this paper, we explore a scenario where a sender provides an information policy and a receiver, upon observing a realization of this policy, decides whether to take a particular action, such as making a purchase. The sender's objective…
We obtain the maximum entropy distribution for an asset from call and digital option prices. A rigorous mathematical proof of its existence and exponential form is given, which can also be applied to legitimise a formal derivation by Buchen…
Design of experiments, random search, initialization of population-based methods, or sampling inside an epoch of an evolutionary algorithm use a sample drawn according to some probability distribution for approximating the location of an…
With ever-increasing amounts of online information available, modeling and predicting individual preferences-for books or articles, for example-is becoming more and more important. Good predictions enable us to improve advice to users, and…
Mechanism design is concerned with settings where a policymaker (or social planner) faces the problem of aggregating the announced preferences of multiple agents into a collective (or social), system-wide decision. One of the most important…
The Shannon entropy, and related quantities such as mutual information, can be used to quantify uncertainty and relevance. However, in practice, it can be difficult to compute these quantities for arbitrary probability distributions,…
We consider a social choice setting with agents that are partitioned into disjoint groups, and have metric preferences over a set of alternatives. Our goal is to choose a single alternative aiming to optimize various objectives that are…
Selecting a cohort from a set of candidates is a common task within and beyond academia. Admitting students, awarding grants, choosing speakers for a conference are situations where human biases may affect the make-up of the final cohort.…
The increasing recognition of the association between adverse human health conditions and many environmental substances as well as processes has led to the need to monitor them. An important problem that arises in environmental statistics…
In this paper, we consider robust control using randomized algorithms. We extend the existing order statistics distribution theory to the general case in which the distribution of population is not assumed to be continuous and the order…