Related papers: Rational Decisions, Random Matrices and Spin Glass…
We use a decision-theoretic framework to study the problem of forecasting discrete outcomes when the forecaster is unable to discriminate among a set of plausible forecast distributions because of partial identification or concerns about…
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…
A perfectly rational decision-maker chooses the best action with the highest utility gain from a set of possible actions. The optimality principles that describe such decision processes do not take into account the computational costs of…
The aim of this work is to prove that it is possible to realise an optical system which produces as output a light intensity that can be expressed in the same mathematical form of the spin glass Hamiltonian. The optical system under study…
Many important challenges in science and technology can be cast as optimization problems. When viewed in a statistical physics framework, these can be tackled by simulated annealing, where a gradual cooling procedure helps search for…
This paper focuses on designing expert systems to support decision making in complex, uncertain environments. In this context, our research indicates that strictly probabilistic representations, which enable the use of decision-theoretic…
Many real-world problems require making sequences of decisions where the outcomes of each decision are probabilistic and uncertain, and the availability of different actions is constrained by the outcomes of previous actions. There is a…
Convergence guarantees for optimization over bounded-rank matrices are delicate to obtain because the feasible set is a non-smooth and non-convex algebraic variety. Existing techniques include projected gradient descent, fixed-rank…
Classical economics has developed an arsenal of methods, based on the idea of representative agents, to come up with precise numbers for next year's GDP, inflation and exchange rates, among (many) other things. Few, however, will disagree…
The pooling problem has applications, e.g., in petrochemical refining, water networks, and supply chains and is widely studied in global optimization. To date, it has largely been treated deterministically, neglecting the influence of…
Algorithmic modeling relies on limited information in data to extrapolate outcomes for unseen scenarios, often embedding an element of arbitrariness in its decisions. A perspective on this arbitrariness that has recently gained interest is…
We consider robust Markov Decision Processes with Borel state and action spaces, unbounded cost and finite time horizon. Our formulation leads to a Stackelberg game against nature. Under integrability, continuity and compactness assumptions…
A disordered system is denominated `annealed' when the interactions themselves may evolve and adjust their values to lower the free energy. The opposite (`quenched') situation when disorder is fixed, is the one relevant for physical…
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…
We give an asymptotic evaluation of the complexity of spherical p-spin spin-glass models via random matrix theory. This study enables us to obtain detailed information about the bottom of the energy landscape, including the absolute minimum…
Humans display a tendency to pay more attention to bad outcomes, often in a disproportionate way relative to their statistical occurrence. They also display euphorism, as well as a preference for the current state of affairs (status quo…
Robust and distributionally robust optimization are modeling paradigms for decision-making under uncertainty where the uncertain parameters are only known to reside in an uncertainty set or are governed by any probability distribution from…
Recommender systems are intrinsically tied to a reliability/coverage dilemma: The more reliable we desire the forecasts, the more conservative the decision will be and thus, the fewer items will be recommended. This causes a detriment to…
We consider whether it is possible to find ground states of frustrated spin systems by solving them locally. Using spin glass physics and Imry-Ma arguments in addition to numerical benchmarks we quantify the power of such local solution…
We study decision dependent distributionally robust optimization models, where the ambiguity sets of probability distributions can depend on the decision variables. These models arise in situations with endogenous uncertainty. The developed…