Implications of no-free-lunch theorems

In the 18th century, the philosopher David Hume observed that induction—inferring the future based on what's happened in the past—can never be reliable. In 1997, SFI Professor David Wolpert with his colleague Bill Macready ...

Exploring 'compellingness' in mechanism design

Consider an auction. You have two types of main protagonists or agents: a seller (or auctioneer) and many potential buyers. There are, of course, certain ground rules. For instance, one objective may be to design the auction ...

Machine learning model analyzes why couples break up

What does artificial intelligence offer that goes beyond traditional statistical models, such as regression analysis, to investigate the behavior of households, in particular the factors that cause the separation of couples ...

Human crowds are best modeled by a 'visual neighborhood'

Human crowd dynamics are best predicted by a visual neighborhood model, based on the visual fields of each person in the crowd. Birds flock, fish school, and human crowds, too, move in a collective motion pattern. Understanding ...

Debunking the Dunning–Kruger effect

John Cleese, the British comedian, once summed up the idea of the Dunning–Kruger effect as, "If you are really, really stupid, then it's impossible for you to know you are really, really stupid." A quick search of the news ...

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