On Friday April 15th, we will have a joint LogiCIC/LIRa session with Jeffrey M. Keisler. Everyone is cordially invited!
Speaker: Jeffrey M. Keisler (UMass Boston)
Date and Time: Friday, April 15th 2016, 13:00-14:30
Venue: Science Park 107, Room F1.15
Title: Observing, reporting and deciding in networks of agents.
Abstract. We define an observation network as a network of agents who each have a vocabulary, a knowledge base in first-order logic, and a set of potential observations. Agents can make inferences and report them to other agents to whom they are linked, but communication is restricted to the common vocabulary of the reporter and recipient. Agents add to their knowledge bases by making observations, receiving reports from other agents, and making inferences, and share useful statements with other agents who have different vocabularies.
A well-known result from mathematical logic, the Craig Interpolation Theorem, can be interpreted in terms of knowledge sharing between pairs of agents. It is a starting point for our formal results. Certain agents called deciders are faced with alternative statements, and must decide which one is true. We consider various questions about when the network is rich enough to ensure that decisions can be made successfully if the knowledge to do so exists somewhere in the network. We obtain some easily checked completeness conditions that ensure that this is so.
The focus of the presentation will be on explanation, interpretation and application of the framework and results, rather than on their derivation. Observation networks are general enough to model many situations. We conclude by considering the example of junction tree algorithms for solving Bayes nets.
Joint work with H. Jerome Keisler, University of Wisconsin.
Biography. Jeffrey Keisler is currently Visiting Professor and Fulbright Distinguished Chair in the Mathematics and Systems Analysis Department at Aalto University in Helsinki. A Professor of Management Information Systems at the University of Massachusetts Boston, he has two books and over fifty journal articles and book chapters in decision analysis and related fields. Professor Keisler is past-President of the INFORMS Decision Analysis Society and has received its Publication Award. His PhD in Decision Sciences is from Harvard University. He will present joint work with H. Jerome Keisler who has been a leader of mathematical logic for over fifty years.