Europe
Complexity of Judgment Aggregation
Endriss, U., Grandi, U., Porello, D.
We analyse the computational complexity of three problems in judgment aggregation: (1) computing a collective judgment from a profile of individual judgments (the winner determination problem); (2) deciding whether a given agent can influence the outcome of a judgment aggregation procedure in her favour by reporting insincere judgments (the strategic manipulation problem); and (3) deciding whether a given judgment aggregation scenario is guaranteed to result in a logically consistent outcome, independently from what the judgments supplied by the individuals are (the problem of the safety of the agenda). We provide results both for specific aggregation procedures (the quota rules, the premise-based procedure, and a distance-based procedure) and for classes of aggregation procedures characterised in terms of fundamental axioms.
Dynamic Network Cartography
Mateos, Gonzalo, Rajawat, Ketan
Communication networks have evolved from specialized, research and tactical transmission systems to large-scale and highly complex interconnections of intelligent devices, increasingly becoming more commercial, consumer-oriented, and heterogeneous. Propelled by emergent social networking services and high-definition streaming platforms, network traffic has grown explosively thanks to the advances in processing speed and storage capacity of state-of-the-art communication technologies. As "netizens" demand a seamless networking experience that entails not only higher speeds, but also resilience and robustness to failures and malicious cyber-attacks, ample opportunities for signal processing (SP) research arise. The vision is for ubiquitous smart network devices to enable data-driven statistical learning algorithms for distributed, robust, and online network operation and management, adaptable to the dynamically-evolving network landscape with minimal need for human intervention. The present paper aims at delineating the analytical background and the relevance of SP tools to dynamic network monitoring, introducing the SP readership to the concept of dynamic network cartography -- a framework to construct maps of the dynamic network state in an efficient and scalable manner tailored to large-scale heterogeneous networks.
A New Look at BDDs for Pseudo-Boolean Constraints
Abรญo, I., Nieuwenhuis, R., Oliveras, A., Rodrรญguez-Carbonell, E., Mayer-Eichberger, V.
Pseudo-Boolean constraints are omnipresent in practical applications, and thus a significant effort has been devoted to the development of good SAT encoding techniques for them. Some of these encodings first construct a Binary Decision Diagram (BDD) for the constraint, and then encode the BDD into a propositional formula. These BDD-based approaches have some important advantages, such as not being dependent on the size of the coefficients, or being able to share the same BDD for representing many constraints. We first focus on the size of the resulting BDDs, which was considered to be an open problem in our research community. We report on previous work where it was proved that there are Pseudo-Boolean constraints for which no polynomial BDD exists. We also give an alternative and simpler proof assuming that NP is different from Co-NP. More interestingly, here we also show how to overcome the possible exponential blowup of BDDs by \emph{coefficient decomposition}. This allows us to give the first polynomial generalized arc-consistent ROBDD-based encoding for Pseudo-Boolean constraints. Finally, we focus on practical issues: we show how to efficiently construct such ROBDDs, how to encode them into SAT with only 2 clauses per node, and present experimental results that confirm that our approach is competitive with other encodings and state-of-the-art Pseudo-Boolean solvers.
Revision of Defeasible Logic Preferences
Governatori, Guido, Olivieri, Francesco, Scannapieco, Simone, Cristani, Matteo
There are several contexts of non-monotonic reasoning where a priority between rules is established whose purpose is preventing conflicts. One formalism that has been widely employed for non-monotonic reasoning is the sceptical one known as Defeasible Logic. In Defeasible Logic the tool used for conflict resolution is a preference relation between rules, that establishes the priority among them. In this paper we investigate how to modify such a preference relation in a defeasible logic theory in order to change the conclusions of the theory itself. We argue that the approach we adopt is applicable to legal reasoning where users, in general, cannot change facts or rules, but can propose their preferences about the relative strength of the rules. We provide a comprehensive study of the possible combinatorial cases and we identify and analyse the cases where the revision process is successful. After this analysis, we identify three revision/update operators and study them against the AGM postulates for belief revision operators, to discover that only a part of these postulates are satisfied by the three operators.
A hybrid cross entropy algorithm for solving dynamic transit network design problem
This paper proposes a hybrid multiagent learning algorithm for solving the dynamic simulation-based bilevel network design problem. The objective is to determine the op-timal frequency of a multimodal transit network, which minimizes total users' travel cost and operation cost of transit lines. The problem is formulated as a bilevel programming problem with equilibrium constraints describing non-cooperative Nash equilibrium in a dynamic simulation-based transit assignment context. A hybrid algorithm combing the cross entropy multiagent learning algorithm and Hooke-Jeeves algorithm is proposed. Computational results are provided on the Sioux Falls network to illustrate the perform-ance of the proposed algorithm.
Gliders2012: Development and Competition Results
Moore, Edward, Obst, Oliver, Prokopenko, Mikhail, Wang, Peter, Held, Jason
The RoboCup 2D Simulation League incorporates several challenging features, setting a benchmark for Artificial Intelligence (AI). In this paper we describe some of the ideas and tools around the development of our team, Gliders2012. In our description, we focus on the evaluation function as one of our central mechanisms for action selection. We also point to a new framework for watching log files in a web browser that we release for use and further development by the RoboCup community. Finally, we also summarize results of the group and final matches we played during RoboCup 2012, with Gliders2012 finishing 4th out of 19 teams.
A survey of non-exchangeable priors for Bayesian nonparametric models
Foti, Nicholas J., Williamson, Sinead
There has recently been a spate of papers in the statistics and machine learning literature developing dependent stochastic processes and using them as priors in Bayesian nonparametric models. In this paper, we aim to provide a representative snapshot of the currently available models, to elucidate links between these models, and to provide an orienting view of the modern constructions of these processes. Traditional nonparametric priors such as the Dirichlet process [DP, 2], Chinese restaurant process [CRP, 3], Pitman-Yor process [4] and the Indian buffet process [IBP, 5] assume that our observations are exchangeable. Under the assumption of exchangeability the order of the data points does not change the probability distribution. Exchangeability is not a valid assumption for all data.
Bayesian nonparametric models for ranked data
Caron, Francois, Teh, Yee Whye
We develop a Bayesian nonparametric extension of the popular Plackett-Luce choice model that can handle an infinite number of choice items. Our framework is based on the theory of random atomic measures, with the prior specified by a gamma process. We derive a posterior characterization and a simple and effective Gibbs sampler for posterior simulation. We develop a time-varying extension of our model, and apply it to the New York Times lists of weekly bestselling books.
A Logic and Adaptive Approach for Efficient Diagnosis Systems using CBR
Bitar, Ibrahim El, Belouadha, Fatima-Zahra, Roudies, Ounsa
Case Based Reasoning (CBR) is an intelligent way of thinking based on experience and capitalization of already solved cases (source cases) to find a solution to a new problem (target case). Retrieval phase consists on identifying source cases that are similar to the target case. This phase may lead to erroneous results if the existing knowledge imperfections are not taken into account. This work presents a novel solution based on Fuzzy logic techniques and adaptation measures which aggregate weighted similarities to improve the retrieval results. To confirm the efficiency of our solution, we have applied it to the industrial diagnosis domain. The obtained results are more efficient results than those obtained by applying typical measures.
On the Prior and Posterior Distributions Used in Graphical Modelling
Graphical model learning and inference are often performed using Bayesian techniques. In particular, learning is usually performed in two separate steps. First, the graph structure is learned from the data; then the parameters of the model are estimated conditional on that graph structure. While the probability distributions involved in this second step have been studied in depth, the ones used in the first step have not been explored in as much detail. In this paper, we will study the prior and posterior distributions defined over the space of the graph structures for the purpose of learning the structure of a graphical model. In particular, we will provide a characterisation of the behaviour of those distributions as a function of the possible edges of the graph. We will then use the properties resulting from this characterisation to define measures of structural variability for both Bayesian and Markov networks, and we will point out some of their possible applications.