Decision Making with Multiple Imperfect Decision Makers

NIPS 2011 Workshop Proposal
Title: Decision Making with Multiple Imperfect Decision Makers
Date: December, 2011
Organisers:
Tatiana V. Guy Miroslav Kárný, Institute of Information Theory and Automation, Czech Republic
David Wolpert, NASA Ames Research Center, USA
David Rios Insua, Royal Academy of Sciences, Spain
Alessandro E.P. Villa, University of Lausanne, Switzerland

OVERVIEW
The prescriptive Bayesian theory of dynamic decision making under uncertainty and incomplete knowledge has reached a high level of maturity. It is well-supported by efficient and theoretically justified algorithms respecting different physical constraints present in applications. The research repeatedly stresses the influence of imperfectness, i.e. limited cognitive and evaluative resources of decision makers that should be considered. Decision making with imperfect decision makers, however, lacks a firm prescriptive ground. This problem emerges repeatedly and seems of difficult solution. For instance, i) the consistent theory of incomplete Bayesian games cannot be applied by imperfect participants; ii) a desirable incorporation of “deliberation effort” into the design of decision-making strategies remains unsolved. At the same time, real societal, biological, economical and engineered systems practically cope with the imperfectness and many descriptive studies confirm their efficiency. The need to understand and remove this discrepancy motivated the preceding NIPS 2010 workshop Decision Making with Multiple Imperfect Decision Makers. It intended to exploit descriptive analysis of properties of interacting imperfect decision makers in order to break the barrier faced by the prescriptive theory and to enable its ubiquitous use. The preceding workshop has opened several new directions towards this ambitious goal and stimulated an information exchange on available results and emerging ideas. The proposed continuation, NIPS 2011 workshop, will keep focusing on the outlined direction while will encourage the ideas and discussions of bounded-rationality and the imperfection of decision makers.
The NIPS 2011 workshop will examine ways of: a) formalising rational decision making of imperfect decision makers; b) creating a prescriptive theory, which respects imperfect decision makers; c) extending the existing feasible prescriptive theories to make them useful for imperfect decision makers; d) recognising the key features allowing real systems to cope with the imperfectness; e) generalising conceptual and algorithmic approaches coping with imperfectness; f) opening new paradigms in addressing the issue of imperfectness.
The workshop aims to bring together different scientific communities, to brainstorm possible research directions, and to encourage collaboration among researchers with complementary ideas and expertise. The workshop will be based on invited talks, contributed talks and posters. Extensive moderated and informal discussions will ensure the targeted information exchange.

Call for Contributions
The workshop will include talks with discussions and poster sessions. We invite participants to submit draft papers describing the technical content of proposed contribution. The selected submission may be accepted either as an oral presentation or as a poster presentation. We especially encourage participants who can contribute in the following areas:
•Formalisation of rational decision making of interacting imperfect decision makers
•Ways leading to a feasible prescriptive theory supporting imperfect decision makers
•Case studies and lessons learnt from nature, technology and society with respect to previous items
•Ideas, tricks and algorithms suitable for a systematic support of imperfect decision makers


Accepted papers will be made available online at the workshop website http://www.utia.cz/NIPSHome. Selected authors will be invited to prepare a full version of the paper to be published in Workshop proceedings either in NIPS Series or similarly as in 2010 (Decision Making with Multiple Imperfect Decision Makers, Eds TV Guy, M Kárný, DH Wolpert, Springer-Verlag GmbH Berlin/Heidelberg)

Targeted Audience
- NIPS community
- Scientists and students from the different scientific communities (decision science, cognitive science, natural science, social science, engineering, etc.) interested in various aspects of decision making, especially with multiple decision makers