While TD updates are simple, a rigorous analysis of TD methods requires sophisticated tools.

The performance of participatory systems will depend on individual reporting decisions. Thus, flat and sequential systems will perform better than a minimal system. The best-case performance of any participatory system will exceed the performance of any of its components. Given a participatory system, we can conduct this evaluation by simulating the parameters in the individual disclosure model shown above. The sequential system outperforms static personalized systems when all group attributes are reported.

However, inmanyapplications including contractual hiringinonlinefreelancing platforms and server allocation in cloud computing systems, the outcome of each action is observed only after a random and action-dependent time.

Attention can be closely related under certain data conditions to Kanerva's Sparse Distributed Memory (SDM), a biologically plausible associative memory model.