Making Better Choices

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles E. Phelps ◽  
Guru Madhavan
Keyword(s):  
Social Choice ◽  
Systems Engineering ◽  
Strategic Behavior ◽  
Systems Design ◽  
National Election ◽  
Voting Systems ◽  
Arranged Marriage ◽  
Local Association ◽  
Community Or ◽  
Joint Decisions

Making Better Choices is about how we make decisions together and the tools we use to get to those decisions. We make joint decisions out of necessity because the choices we make affect each other. Each decision we take has a consequence. This book reinforces why we need better systems design and analyses given the consequences of our decisions. It is also about carefully thinking about the values of the choices we make, whether they occur in a small meeting of individuals in a local association or community or in a national election. It will illuminate the differences between sincere behavior and strategic behavior to defeat an opponent in voting, the latter being quite common. The book will also review different voting systems, what their original intents were, and what their deficits are. In trying to bring all these topics together and more, the authors realized that the book is in essence an outcome of the arranged marriage between social choice and systems engineering that they conducted. The more one begins to explore the aspects of social choice and systems engineering, the more one realizes how much they have in common, and how much more they can offer if they are unified.

scholarly journals Complexity of Strategic Behavior in Multi-Winner Elections

2008 ◽  
Vol 33 ◽  
pp. 149-178 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Meir ◽  
A. D. Procaccia ◽  
J. S. Rosenschein ◽  
Aviv Zohar
Keyword(s):  
Social Choice ◽  
Strategic Behavior ◽  
Voting Systems ◽  
Worst Case ◽  
Case Complexity ◽  
Worst Case Complexity ◽  
Computational Aspects ◽  
And Control ◽  
Manipulation And Control

Although recent years have seen a surge of interest in the computational aspects of social choice, no specific attention has previously been devoted to elections with multiple winners, e.g., elections of an assembly or committee. In this paper, we characterize the worst-case complexity of manipulation and control in the context of four prominent multi-winner voting systems, under different formulations of the strategic agent’s goal.

Voting Systems, Honest Preferences and Pareto Optimality

1973 ◽  
Vol 67 (3) ◽  
pp. 934-946 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Zeckhauser
Keyword(s):  
Social Choice ◽  
Pareto Optimality ◽  
The Political ◽  
Voting Systems ◽  
Political Arena ◽  
Decentralized System ◽  
Economic Decisions

The market is a decentralized system that can bring about efficient economic decisions. This paper examines whether social choice mechanisms can duplicate this success in the political arena. The famed Arrow result tells us centralized systems cannot achieve efficient, nondictatorial outcomes unless they rely on cardinal preferences. With decentralization, efficiency comes to require something more: the truthful revelation of preferences. Schemes that elicit honest preferences are derived here. By their very structure they are shown to lead to inefficient outcomes. This negative result leads to the question whether the validity of the initial analogy continues. Market-based standards of performance may be innappropriate for investigations of political phenomena.

scholarly journals Elegance as Complexity Reduction in Systems Design

Complexity ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luca Iandoli ◽  
Letizia Piantedosi ◽  
Alejandro Salado ◽  
Giuseppe Zollo
Keyword(s):  
Complexity Theory ◽  
Systems Engineering ◽  
Visual Art ◽  
Systems Design ◽  
Gestalt Psychology ◽  
Strongly Correlated ◽  
Design Strategies ◽  
Good Design ◽  
Effective Level ◽  
Systems Effectiveness

Elegance is often invoked as a characteristic of good design, but it cannot be pursued as a design objective because of the absence of actionable definitions that can be translated into design strategies and metrics. In this work, we analyze elegance in the context of systems engineering using a perspective that integrates visual art, Gestalt psychology, neuroscience, and complexity theory. In particular, we measure elegance as effective complexity and theorize that it can be achieved by a process of complexity resolution based on the adoption of eight visual heuristics. We present an empirical study in which a sample of systems engineers were asked to assess alternative representations of a same system and show that effective complexity is strongly correlated to perceived elegance and systems effectiveness. Our results are consistent with independent findings obtained in other fields including design and psychology of perception showing that good design must embed an effective level of complexity achievable through a mix of familiarity and novelty.

Future Directions in CASE Repositories

2011 ◽  
pp. 194-205
Author(s):  
Ajantha Dahanayake
Keyword(s):  
Systems Engineering ◽  
User Interfaces ◽  
Systems Design ◽  
Software Systems ◽  
User Requirements ◽  
Development Environment ◽  
Multiple Representation ◽  
Multiple User ◽  
Computer Aided ◽  
Design Activities

Today, components and Component Based Development (CBD) is seen as one of the important events in the evolution of information technology. Components and CBD offer the promise of a software marketplace where components may be built, bought, or sold in a manner similar to components in other industries. In the light of the ongoing developments, in the manner and art of developing software systems, it is important to consider how the Computer Aided Systems Engineering (CASE) environment that supports building these systems can be produced on a CBD approach. In spite of the fact that CASE environments have been around since the ’70s, there are still many problems with these environments. Among the problems of CASE environments are the lack of conceptual models to help understand the technology, the poor state of user requirements specification, inflexible method, support and complicated integration facilities, which contribute to the dissatisfaction in CASE users. During the ’90s there has been a growing need to provide a more formal basis to the art of software development and maintenance through standardized process and product models. The importance of CAME (Computer Aided Method Engineering) in CASE led to the development of CASE shells, MetaCASE tools, or customizable CASE environments that were intended to overcome the inflexibility of method support. The declining cost of computing technology and its increasing functionality, specifically in graphic user interfaces, has contributed to the present re-invention of CASE environments. CASE research in the last decade has addressed issues such as method integration, multiple user support, multiple representation paradigms, method modifiability and evolution, and information retrieval and computation facilities. Considerable progress has been made by isolating particular issues and providing a comprehensive solution with certain trade-off on limited flexibility. The requirement of a fully Component Based architecture for CASE environments has been not examined properly. The combination of requirements of flexibility in terms of support for arbitrary modeling techniques, and evolution of the development environment to ever-changing functionality and applications never the less needs a flexible environment architectures. Therefore, the theory formulation and development of a prototype for designing a next generation of CASE environments is addressed in this book. A CAME environment is considered as a component of a CASE environment. A comprehensive solution is sought to the environment problem by paying attention to a conceptual model of such an environment that has been designed to avoid the confusion around integration issues, and to meet the specification of user requirements concerning a component-based architecture. A CAME environment provides a fully flexible environment for method specification and integration, and can be used for information systems design activities. A large part of this book reports how this theory leads to the designing of the architecture of such an environment. This final chapter contains a review of the theory and an assessment of the extent to which its applicability is upheld.

scholarly journals The deployable telescope: a cutting-edge solution for high spatial and temporal resolved Earth observation

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (6) ◽  
pp. 365-376 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis Dolkens ◽  
Hans Kuiper ◽  
Victor Villalba Corbacho
Keyword(s):  
Temporal Resolution ◽  
Systems Engineering ◽  
Systems Design ◽  
Image Data ◽  
Earth Observation ◽  
Cutting Edge ◽  
High Mass ◽  
Current Status ◽  
Active Optics ◽  
The Status

Abstract The increase of spatial and temporal resolution for Earth observation (EO) is the ultimate driver for science and societal applications. However, the state-of-the-art EO missions like DigitalGlobe’s Worldview-3, are very costly. Moreover, this system has a high mass of 2800 kg and limited swath width of about 15 km which limits the temporal resolution. In this article, we present the status of the deployable space telescope (DST) project, which has been running for 6 years now at the Delft University of Technology, as a cutting-edge solution to solve this issue. Deployable optics have the potential of revolutionising the field of high resolution EO. By splitting up the primary mirror (M1) of a telescope into deployable segments and placing the secondary mirror (M2) on a deployable boom, the launch volume of a telescope can be reduced by a factor of 4 or more, allowing for much lower launch costs. This allows for larger EO constellations, providing image data with a much better revisit time than existing solutions. The DST specification baseline, based on Wordview-3, aims to provide images with a ground resolution of 25 cm (panchromatic 450–650 nm) from an orbital altitude of 500 km. In this paper, the current status of the optical, thermo-mechanical, and active optics systems design are described. The concurrent design approach combined with a strict bottom-up and top-down compliant systems engineering approach show that the DST is a healthy system concept.

Combining Lean and Six Sigma in the context of Systems Engineering design

2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 290-312 ◽  
Author(s):  
TR Sreeram ◽  
Asokan Thondiyath
Keyword(s):  
Product Development ◽  
Engineering Design ◽  
Systems Engineering ◽  
Social Action ◽  
Six Sigma ◽  
Systems Design ◽  
System Level ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Future Work

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present a combined framework for system design using Six Sigma and Lean concepts. Systems Engineering has evolved independently and there are numerous tools and techniques available to address issues that may arise in the design of systems. In the context of systems design, the application of Six Sigma and Lean concepts results in a flexible and adaptable framework. A combined framework is presented here that allows better visualization of the system-level components and their interactions at parametric level, and it also illuminates gaps that make way for continuous improvement. The Deming’s Plan-Do-Check-Act is the basis of this framework. Three case studies are presented to evaluate the application of this framework in the context of Systems Engineering design. The paper concludes with a summary of advantages of using a combined framework, its limitations and scope for future work. Design/methodology/approach – Six Sigma, Lean and Systems Engineering approaches combined into a framework for collaborative product development. Findings – The present framework is not rigid and does not attempt to force fit any tools or concepts. The framework is generic and allows flexibility through a plug and play type of implementation. This is important, as engineering change needs vary constantly to meet consumer demands. Therefore, it is important to engrain flexibility in the development of a foundational framework for design-encapsulating improvements and innovation. From a sustainability perspective, it is important to develop techniques that drive rationality in the decisions, especially during tradeoffs and conflicts. Research limitations/implications – Scalability of the approach for large systems where complex interactions exist. Besides, the application of negotiation techniques for more than three persons poses a challenge from a mathematical context. Future research should address these in the context of systems design using Six Sigma and Lean techniques. Practical implications – This paper provides a flexible framework for combining the three techniques based on Six Sigma, Lean and Systems Engineering. Social implications – This paper will influence the construction of agent-based systems, particularly the ones using the Habermas’s theory of social action as the basis for product development. Originality/value – This paper has not been published in any other journal or conference.

The Role and Limitations of Modeling and Simulation in Systems Design

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason M. Aughenbaugh ◽  
Christiaan J. J. Paredis
Keyword(s):  
Modeling And Simulation ◽  
Systems Engineering ◽  
Design Method ◽  
Systems Design ◽  
Emergent Behavior ◽  
Research Directions ◽  
Decomposition Approach ◽  
System Decomposition ◽  
Complex Design

To design today’s complex, multi-disciplinary systems, designers need a design method that allows them to systematically decompose a complex design problem into simpler sub-problems. Systems engineering provides such a framework. In an iterative, hierarchical fashion systems are decomposed into subsystems and requirements are allocated to these subsystems based on estimates of their attributes. In this paper, we investigate the role and limitations of modeling and simulation in this process of system decomposition and requirements flowdown. We first identify different levels of complexity in the estimation of system attributes, ranging from simple aggregation to complex emergent behavior. We also identify the main obstacles to the systems engineering decomposition approach: identifying coupling at the appropriate level of abstraction and characterizing and processing uncertainty. The main contributions of this paper are to identify these short-comings, present the role of modeling and simulation in overcoming these shortcomings, and discuss research directions for addressing these issues and expanding the role of modeling and simulation in the future.

Objections to Majority Judgment

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michel Balinski ◽  
Rida Laraki
Keyword(s):  
Social Choice ◽  
Strategic Behavior ◽  
Choice Theory ◽  
Social Choice Theory ◽  
Practical Method ◽  
Majority Judgment

This chapter focuses on majority judgment drawbacks. Properties, including participant-consistency, join-consistency, and proper cancellation, which majority judgment does not satisfy, are also lacking in other traditional models of social choice theory. The chapter concludes that majority judgment is a practical method for ranking and electing, and is a choice-monotonic, rank-monotonic, and strongly monotonic method. Drawbacks of traditional models are also highlighted, and it is stated that the traditional models lack guarantees of change in the estimation of voters without affecting the outcome of the election or ranking. The chapter discusses the critics of the majority judgment, who do not take into consideration the strategic behavior of judges and voters.

scholarly journals Potentials for the Integration of Design Thinking along Automotive Systems Engineering Focusing Security and Safety

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 2883-2892 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julian Tekaat ◽  
Aschot Kharatyan ◽  
Harald Anacker ◽  
Roman Dumitrescu
Keyword(s):  
System Design ◽  
Systems Engineering ◽  
Autonomous Vehicles ◽  
Design Thinking ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
Systems Design ◽  
Automotive Systems ◽  
Complex Technical Systems ◽  
Systematic Security ◽  
Early Phases

AbstractThe increasingly intelligent, highly complex, technical systems of tomorrow - for instance autonomous vehicles - result in the necessity for a systematic security- and safety-oriented development process that starts in the early phases of system design. Automotive Systems Engineering (ASE) as one approach is increasingly gaining ground in the automotive industry. However, this approach is still in a prototype stage. The consideration of security and safety within the early stages of systems design leads to so- called ill-defined problems. Such are not covered by ASE, but can be addressed by means of Design Thinking. Therefore we introduce an approach to combine both approaches. Based on this combination, we derive potentials in the context of the consideration of security and safety. Essential advantages are the possibility to think ahead of threat scenarios at an early stage in system design. Due to an incomplete database, this is not supported or only partially supported by conventional approaches. The resulting potentials are derived based upon a practical example.

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