Dynamic stochastic programs are prototypical for optimization problems with an inherent tree structure inducing characteristic sparsity patterns in the KKT systems of interior methods. We propose an integrated modeling and solution approach for such tree-sparse programs. Three closely related natural formulations are theoretically analyzed from a control-theoretic perspective and compared to ea...

In the literature, two series of models have been proposed to address prediction problems including classification and regression. Simple models, such as generalized linear models, have ordinary performance but strong interpretability on a set of simple features. The other series, including tree-based models, organize numerical, categorical and high dimensional features into a comprehensive str...

This paper reports the effect of a moral education programme on the ethical judgement making ability of university students. The programme comprises two forms of intervention: a dedicated ethics course and subsequent practical training. A total of 113 accounting students from six Malaysian universities participated in a longitudinal study including three points of data collection, prior to an e...

Predicting invasion potential has global signifi cance for managing ecosystems as well as important theoretical implications for understanding community assembly. Phylogenetic relationships of introduced species to the extant community may be predictive of establishment success because of the opposing forces of competition/shared enemies (which should limit invasions by close relatives) versus ...

This paper studies the properties and performance of models for estimating local probability distributions which are used as components of larger probabilistic systems — history-based generative parsing models. We report experimental results showing that memory-based learning outperforms many commonly used methods for this task (Witten-Bell, Jelinek-Mercer with fixed weights, decision trees, an...

Many constraint toolkits provide logical connectives like disjunction, negation and implication. These permit complex constraint expressions to be built from primitive constraints. However, the propagation of such complex constraint expressions is typically limited. We therefore present a simple and light weight method for propagating complex constraint expressions. We provide a precise charact...

In this paper, we propose a new algorithm to establish Generalized Arc Consistency (GAC) on positive table constraints, i.e. constraints defined in extension by a set of allowed tuples. Our algorithm visits the lists of valid and allowed tuples in an alternative fashion when looking for a support (i.e. a tuple that is both allowed and valid). It is then able to jump over sequences of valid tupl...

Simulated landscapes have been used for decades to evaluate search strategies whose goal is to find the landscape location with maximum fitness. Applications include modeling the capacity of enzymes to catalyze reactions and the clinical effectiveness of medical treatments. Understanding properties of landscapes is important for understanding search difficulty. This paper presents a novel and t...