scholarly journals Fair Division Through Information Withholding

2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (02) ◽  
pp. 2014-2021
Author(s):  
Hadi Hosseini ◽  
Sujoy Sikdar ◽  
Rohit Vaish ◽  
Hejun Wang ◽  
Lirong Xia
Keyword(s):  
Real World ◽  
Fair Division ◽  
Optimal Number ◽  
The Other ◽  
Indivisible Goods ◽  
Worst Case ◽  
Optimal Amount ◽  
Preference Data ◽  
Amount Of Information ◽  
Information Withholding

Envy-freeness up to one good (EF1) is a well-studied fairness notion for indivisible goods that addresses pairwise envy by the removal of at most one good. In the worst case, each pair of agents might require the (hypothetical) removal of a different good, resulting in a weak aggregate guarantee. We study allocations that are nearly envy-free in aggregate, and define a novel fairness notion based on information withholding. Under this notion, an agent can withhold (or hide) some of the goods in its bundle and reveal the remaining goods to the other agents. We observe that in practice, envy-freeness can be achieved by withholding only a small number of goods overall. We show that finding allocations that withhold an optimal number of goods is computationally hard even for highly restricted classes of valuations. In contrast to the worst-case results, our experiments on synthetic and real-world preference data show that existing algorithms for finding EF1 allocations withhold a close-to-optimal amount of information.

scholarly journals Equitable Allocations of Indivisible Goods

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rupert Freeman ◽  
Sujoy Sikdar ◽  
Rohit Vaish ◽  
Lirong Xia
Keyword(s):  
Economic Efficiency ◽  
Pareto Optimality ◽  
Real World ◽  
Fair Division ◽  
Prior Work ◽  
Indivisible Goods ◽  
Preference Data ◽  
Novel Algorithm

In fair division, equitability dictates that each participant receives the same level of utility. In this work, we study equitable allocations of indivisible goods among agents with additive valuations. While prior work has studied (approximate) equitability in isolation, we consider equitability in conjunction with other well-studied notions of fairness and economic efficiency. We show that the Leximin algorithm produces an allocation that satisfies equitability up to any good and Pareto optimality. We also give a novel algorithm that guarantees Pareto optimality and equitability up to one good in pseudopolynomial time.  Our experiments on real-world preference data reveal that approximate envy-freeness, approximate equitability, and Pareto optimality can often be achieved simultaneously.

scholarly journals Dividing the indivisible

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Wintein ◽  
Conrad Heilmann
Keyword(s):  
Fair Division ◽  
The Other ◽  
Indivisible Goods ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Limited Applicability ◽  
The One

Philosophical theories of fairness propose to divide a good that several individuals have a claim to in proportion to the strength of their respective claims. We suggest that currently, these theories face a dilemma when dealing with a good that is indivisible. On the one hand, theories of fairness that use weighted lotteries are either of limited applicability or fall prey to an objection by Brad Hooker. On the other hand, accounts that do without weighted lotteries fall prey to three fairness paradoxes. We demonstrate that division methods from apportionment theory, which has hitherto been ignored by philosophical theories of fairness, can be used to provide fair division for indivisible goods without weighted lotteries and without fairness paradoxes.

scholarly journals Comparing Approximate Relaxations of Envy-Freeness

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Georgios Amanatidis ◽  
Georgios Birmpas ◽  
Vangelis Markakis
Keyword(s):  
Fair Division ◽  
Complete Picture ◽  
Indivisible Goods ◽  
Worst Case ◽  
Approximation Quality ◽  
Division Problems

In fair division problems with indivisible goods it is well known that one cannot have any guarantees for the classic fairness notions of envy-freeness and proportionality. As a result, several relaxations have been introduced, most of which in quite recent works. We focus on four such notions, namely envy-freeness up to one good (EF1), envy-freeness up to any good (EFX), maximin share fairness (MMS), and pairwise maximin share fairness (PMMS). Since obtaining these relaxations also turns out to be problematic in several scenarios, approximate versions of them have also been considered. In this work, we investigate further the connections  between the four notions mentioned above and their approximate versions. We establish several tight or almost tight results concerning the approximation quality that any of these notions guarantees for the others, providing an almost complete picture of this landscape. Some of our findings reveal interesting and surprising consequences regarding the power of these notions, e.g., PMMS and EFX provide the same worst-case guarantee for MMS, despite PMMS being a strictly stronger notion than EFX. We believe such implications provide further insight on the quality of approximately fair solutions. 

Improving the External Validity of Conjoint Analysis: The Essential Role of Profile Distribution

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brandon de la Cuesta ◽  
Naoki Egami ◽  
Kosuke Imai
Keyword(s):  
Conjoint Analysis ◽  
Real World ◽  
External Validity ◽  
Causal Effect ◽  
The Other ◽  
Estimation Methods ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Actual Distribution ◽  
Open Source Software Package ◽  
Profile Distribution

Abstract Conjoint analysis has become popular among social scientists for measuring multidimensional preferences. When analyzing such experiments, researchers often focus on the average marginal component effect (AMCE), which represents the causal effect of a single profile attribute while averaging over the remaining attributes. What has been overlooked, however, is the fact that the AMCE critically relies upon the distribution of the other attributes used for the averaging. Although most experiments employ the uniform distribution, which equally weights each profile, both the actual distribution of profiles in the real world and the distribution of theoretical interest are often far from uniform. This mismatch can severely compromise the external validity of conjoint analysis. We empirically demonstrate that estimates of the AMCE can be substantially different when averaging over the target profile distribution instead of uniform. We propose new experimental designs and estimation methods that incorporate substantive knowledge about the profile distribution. We illustrate our methodology through two empirical applications, one using a real-world distribution and the other based on a counterfactual distribution motivated by a theoretical consideration. The proposed methodology is implemented through an open-source software package.

scholarly journals An Algorithm for Choosing the Optimal Number of Muscle Synergies during Walking

Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (10) ◽  
pp. 3311
Author(s):  
Riccardo Ballarini ◽  
Marco Ghislieri ◽  
Marco Knaflitz ◽  
Valentina Agostini
Keyword(s):  
Motor Task ◽  
Optimal Number ◽  
The Other ◽  
Simulated Dataset ◽  
Muscle Synergies ◽  
Mean Square ◽  
Real Dataset ◽  
Traditional Approaches ◽  
Selection Of ◽  
Semg Signals

In motor control studies, the 90% thresholding of variance accounted for (VAF) is the classical way of selecting the number of muscle synergies expressed during a motor task. However, the adoption of an arbitrary cut-off has evident drawbacks. The aim of this work is to describe and validate an algorithm for choosing the optimal number of muscle synergies (ChoOSyn), which can overcome the limitations of VAF-based methods. The proposed algorithm is built considering the following principles: (1) muscle synergies should be highly consistent during the various motor task epochs (i.e., remaining stable in time), (2) muscle synergies should constitute a base with low intra-level similarity (i.e., to obtain information-rich synergies, avoiding redundancy). The algorithm performances were evaluated against traditional approaches (threshold-VAF at 90% and 95%, elbow-VAF and plateau-VAF), using both a simulated dataset and a real dataset of 20 subjects. The performance evaluation was carried out by analyzing muscle synergies extracted from surface electromyographic (sEMG) signals collected during walking tasks lasting 5 min. On the simulated dataset, ChoOSyn showed comparable performances compared to VAF-based methods, while, in the real dataset, it clearly outperformed the other methods, in terms of the fraction of correct classifications, mean error (ME), and root mean square error (RMSE). The proposed approach may be beneficial to standardize the selection of the number of muscle synergies between different research laboratories, independent of arbitrary thresholds.

scholarly journals The optimal amount of information to provide in an academic manuscript

2019 ◽  
Vol 121 (3) ◽  
pp. 1685-1705 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. A. Garcia ◽  
Rosa Rodriguez-Sánchez ◽  
J. Fdez-Valdivia
Keyword(s):  
Optimal Amount ◽  
Amount Of Information

scholarly journals GazeEMD: Detecting Visual Intention in Gaze-Based Human-Robot Interaction

Robotics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 68
Author(s):  
Lei Shi ◽  
Cosmin Copot ◽  
Steve Vanlanduit
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Load ◽  
Real World ◽  
Robotic Manipulator ◽  
Similarity Score ◽  
Human Robot Interaction ◽  
Experimental Results ◽  
The Other ◽  
Robot Interaction ◽  
Run Length ◽  
The Real

In gaze-based Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), it is important to determine human visual intention for interacting with robots. One typical HRI interaction scenario is that a human selects an object by gaze and a robotic manipulator will pick up the object. In this work, we propose an approach, GazeEMD, that can be used to detect whether a human is looking at an object for HRI application. We use Earth Mover’s Distance (EMD) to measure the similarity between the hypothetical gazes at objects and the actual gazes. Then, the similarity score is used to determine if the human visual intention is on the object. We compare our approach with a fixation-based method and HitScan with a run length in the scenario of selecting daily objects by gaze. Our experimental results indicate that the GazeEMD approach has higher accuracy and is more robust to noises than the other approaches. Hence, the users can lessen cognitive load by using our approach in the real-world HRI scenario.

Peer Sharing Facilitates the Effect of Inquiry-based Projects on Science Learning

2010 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hui-Min Chung ◽  
Kristina Jackson Behan
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Real World ◽  
Scientific Inquiry ◽  
Science Learning ◽  
Group Learning ◽  
Authentic Assessment ◽  
The Other ◽  
Learning Activity ◽  
Millennial Students ◽  
Inquiry Based Learning

Authentic assessment exercises are similar to real-world tasks that would be expected by a professional. An authentic assessment in combination with an inquiry-based learning activity enhances students' learning and rehearses them for their future roles, whether as scientists or as informed citizens. Over a period of 2 years, we experimented with two inquiry-based projects; one had traditional scientific inquiry characteristics, and the other used popular culture as the medium of inquiry. We found that activities that incorporated group learning motivated students and sharpened their abilities to apply and communicate their knowledge of science. We also discovered that incorporating popular culture provided ““Millennial”” students with a refreshing view of science learning and increased their appetites to explore and elaborate on science.

ERGUN ÖZBUDUN, Contemporary Turkish Politics: Challenges to Democratic Consolidation (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2000). Pp. 181. $49.95 cloth.

2001 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 657-660
Author(s):  
Frank Tachau
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Current Literature ◽  
Real World ◽  
Democratic Consolidation ◽  
World Politics ◽  
The Other ◽  
Southern Europe ◽  
Turkish Politics ◽  
Political Studies

Based on Professor Özbudun's lectures at Bilkent University, this book is at once compact, highly readable, and very insightful. Unlike much current literature on Turkey, the analysis is set in a broad and informed comparative context. Turkey, the author points out, has been left out of comparative political studies, particularly those encompassing the Middle East and southern Europe, in which arguably it could (or should) have been included. Scholarly neglect thus reflects real-world politics: Turkey falls between two worlds, one of which it once largely controlled, the other to which it currently aspires to belong. This lacuna is one of the factors that persuaded Özbudun to publish this volume.

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