scholarly journals Bayesian Decision Process for Budget-efficient Crowdsourced Clustering

Author(s):  
Xiaozhou Wang ◽  
Xi Chen ◽  
Qihang Lin ◽  
Weidong Liu

The performance of clustering depends on an appropriately defined similarity between two items. When the similarity is measured based on human perception, human workers are often employed to estimate a similarity score between items in order to support clustering, leading to a procedure called crowdsourced clustering. Assuming a monetary reward is paid to a worker for each similarity score and assuming the similarities between pairs and workers' reliability have a large diversity, when the budget is limited, it is critical to wisely assign pairs of items to different workers to optimize the clustering result. We model this budget allocation problem as a Markov decision process where item pairs are dynamically assigned to workers based on the historical similarity scores they provided. We propose an optimistic knowledge gradient policy where the assignment of items in each stage is based on the minimum-weight K-cut defined on a similarity graph. We provide simulation studies and real data analysis to demonstrate the performance of the proposed method.

Author(s):  
Amir H. Ghasemi ◽  
Hossein Rastgoftar

Semi-autonomous steering promises to combine the best of human perception, planning, and manual control with the precision of automatic control. This paper presents an adaptive haptic shared control scheme using Markov Decision Process (MDP) to keep human drivers in the loop yet free attention and avoid automation pitfalls. Using MDP, algorithms are developed to support the negotiation of authority between the human driver and automation system.


Author(s):  
Guanghao Qi ◽  
Nilanjan Chatterjee

Abstract Background Previous studies have often evaluated methods for Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis based on simulations that do not adequately reflect the data-generating mechanisms in genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and there are often discrepancies in the performance of MR methods in simulations and real data sets. Methods We use a simulation framework that generates data on full GWAS for two traits under a realistic model for effect-size distribution coherent with the heritability, co-heritability and polygenicity typically observed for complex traits. We further use recent data generated from GWAS of 38 biomarkers in the UK Biobank and performed down sampling to investigate trends in estimates of causal effects of these biomarkers on the risk of type 2 diabetes (T2D). Results Simulation studies show that weighted mode and MRMix are the only two methods that maintain the correct type I error rate in a diverse set of scenarios. Between the two methods, MRMix tends to be more powerful for larger GWAS whereas the opposite is true for smaller sample sizes. Among the other methods, random-effect IVW (inverse-variance weighted method), MR-Robust and MR-RAPS (robust adjust profile score) tend to perform best in maintaining a low mean-squared error when the InSIDE assumption is satisfied, but can produce large bias when InSIDE is violated. In real-data analysis, some biomarkers showed major heterogeneity in estimates of their causal effects on the risk of T2D across the different methods and estimates from many methods trended in one direction with increasing sample size with patterns similar to those observed in simulation studies. Conclusion The relative performance of different MR methods depends heavily on the sample sizes of the underlying GWAS, the proportion of valid instruments and the validity of the InSIDE assumption. Down-sampling analysis can be used in large GWAS for the possible detection of bias in the MR methods.


Mathematics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (12) ◽  
pp. 1385
Author(s):  
Irais Mora-Ochomogo ◽  
Marco Serrato ◽  
Jaime Mora-Vargas ◽  
Raha Akhavan-Tabatabaei

Natural disasters represent a latent threat for every country in the world. Due to climate change and other factors, statistics show that they continue to be on the rise. This situation presents a challenge for the communities and the humanitarian organizations to be better prepared and react faster to natural disasters. In some countries, in-kind donations represent a high percentage of the supply for the operations, which presents additional challenges. This research proposes a Markov Decision Process (MDP) model to resemble operations in collection centers, where in-kind donations are received, sorted, packed, and sent to the affected areas. The decision addressed is when to send a shipment considering the uncertainty of the donations’ supply and the demand, as well as the logistics costs and the penalty of unsatisfied demand. As a result of the MDP a Monotone Optimal Non-Decreasing Policy (MONDP) is proposed, which provides valuable insights for decision-makers within this field. Moreover, the necessary conditions to prove the existence of such MONDP are presented.


Electronics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 190
Author(s):  
Wu Ouyang ◽  
Zhigang Chen ◽  
Jia Wu ◽  
Genghua Yu ◽  
Heng Zhang

As transportation becomes more convenient and efficient, users move faster and faster. When a user leaves the service range of the original edge server, the original edge server needs to migrate the tasks offloaded by the user to other edge servers. An effective task migration strategy needs to fully consider the location of users, the load status of edge servers, and energy consumption, which make designing an effective task migration strategy a challenge. In this paper, we innovatively proposed a mobile edge computing (MEC) system architecture consisting of multiple smart mobile devices (SMDs), multiple unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), and a base station (BS). Moreover, we establish the model of the Markov decision process with unknown rewards (MDPUR) based on the traditional Markov decision process (MDP), which comprehensively considers the three aspects of the migration distance, the residual energy status of the UAVs, and the load status of the UAVs. Based on the MDPUR model, we propose a advantage-based value iteration (ABVI) algorithm to obtain the effective task migration strategy, which can help the UAV group to achieve load balancing and reduce the total energy consumption of the UAV group under the premise of ensuring user service quality. Finally, the results of simulation experiments show that the ABVI algorithm is effective. In particular, the ABVI algorithm has better performance than the traditional value iterative algorithm. And in a dynamic environment, the ABVI algorithm is also very robust.


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