Computer Engineering Commons^™

Granularity Helps Explain Seemingly Irrational Features Of Human Decision Making, Joe Lorkowski, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Starting from well-known studies by Kahmenan and Tarsky, researchers have found many examples when our decision making -- and our decision making -- seem to be irrational. In this chapter, we show that this seemingly irrational decision making can be explained if we take into account that human abilities to process information are limited; as a result, instead of the exact values of different quantities, we operate with granules that contain these values. On several examples, we show that optimization under such granularity restriction indeed leads to observed human decision making. Thus, granularity helps explain seemingly irrational human decision making.

On Efficient Representation Of Expert Knowledge By Fuzzy Logic: Towards An Optimal Combination Of Granularity And Higher-Order Approaches, Hung T. Nguyen, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

A natural approach to designing an intelligent system is to incorporate expert knowledge into this system. One of the main approaches to translating this knowledge into computer-understandable terms is the approach of fuzzy logic. It has led to many successful applications, but in several aspects, the resulting computer representation is somewhat different from the original expert meaning. Two related approaches have been used to make fuzzy logic more adequate in representing expert reasoning: granularity and higher-order approaches. Each approach is successful in some applications where the other approach did not succeed so well; it is therefore desirable to combine these …

Multi-Resolution Data Processing: It Is Necessary, It Is Possible, It Is Fundamental, Scott A. Starks, Vladik Kreinovich, Alex Meystel

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Experience shows that many data processing problems are difficult to solve, and some of these problems have even been proven to be computationally intractable. Human experts successfully solve many such problems by using a hierarchical, multi-resolution approach. These multi-resolution methods are, in several cases, provably optimal. However, due to the computational intractability of the problem itself, the multi-resolution approach can only work if the systems that we are analyzing are themselves hierarchical. We show that, first, due to (inevitable) measurement inaccuracies, an arbitrary input data is consistent with the hierarchical model, and second, that in many cases, the actual physical …

Towards Computers Of Generation Omega - Non-Equilibrium Thermodynamics, Granularity, And Acausal Processes: A Brief Survey, Misha Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Proceedings of the International Conference on Intelligent Systems and Semiotics (ISAS'97), National Institute of Standards and Technology Publ., Gaithersburg, MD, 1997, pp. 383-388.

Nowadays, we are using mainly computer of fourth generation, and we are designing fifth-generation computers. It is reasonable to ask: what is the perspective? What will the computers of generation omega look like?

--As the speed of data processing increases, we face a natural limitation of causality, according to which the speed of all processes is limited by the speed of light.

--Lately, a new area of acausal (causality violating) processes has entered mainstream physics.

This …