In this paper, we present the annotation purposes for a personal as well as for a collective use. In the context of digital documents, annotation systems allow not only to annotate passages but also to comment or reply to annotations within discussion threads (similar feature than forum’s one). Thus, readers can express their points of view, debate and even reach a consensus about annotated pas...

The purpose of contextual information retrieval is to make some exploration towards designing user specific search engines that are able to adapt the retrieval model to the variety of differences on user’s contexts. In this paper we propose an influence diagram based retrieval model which is able to incorporate contexts, viewed as user’s long-term interests into the retrieval process.

While algorithms for influence diagrams allow for computing the optimal setting for decision variables, they offer no guidance in generation of decision variables, arguably a critical stage of decision making. A decision maker confronted with a complex system may not know which variables to best manipulate to achieve a desired objective. We introduce the concept of search for opportunities whic...

This paper empirically investigates the impact of normative social influence on group homogeneity in media preferences and group meeting outcomes in a setting where 58 student groups voluntarily used various communication media over a three-month software development project period. Group homogeneity in media preferences was argued to mediate the impact of normative social influence on group me...

In an earlier paper, a general approach to prescribing decision procedures for a command and control team was described. This approach involves three major steps: (1) domain modeling using decision networks (a.k.a. influence diagrams), (2) compiling the domain model into a set of near optimal decision procedures that can be executed by people, and (3) partitioning and distributing the compiled ...

In this paper we introduce temporal action graph games (TAGGs), a novel graphical representation of imperfect-information extensive form games. We show that when a game involves anonymity or context-specific utility independencies, its encoding as a TAGG can be much more compact than its direct encoding as a multiagent influence diagram (MAID). We also show that TAGGs can be understood as indir...

Compared to Latinos in the rest of the United States, relatively more of California’s Latinos are recent immigrants, non-citizens, and of Mexican or Central American descent. Nevertheless, the Latino population is culturally, ethnically, and racially diverse. In addition to country of origin, levels of education and acculturation influence dietary patterns and health profile of this population....

We consider the problem of devising incentive strategies for viral marketing of a product. In particular, we assume that the seller can influence penetration of the product by offering two incentive programs: a) direct incentives to potential buyers (influence) and b) referral rewards for customers who influence potential buyers to make the purchase (exploit connections). The problem is to dete...

Influence diagrams are a decision-theoretic extension of probabilistic graphical models. In this paper we show how they can be used to solve the Goddard problem. We present results of numerical experiments with this problem and compare the solutions provided by influence diagrams with the optimal solution.

A fast and continuously changing business environment demands flexible software systems easy to modify and maintain. Due to the extent of interconnection between systems and the internal quality of each system many IT-decision makers find it difficult predicting the effort of making changes to their systems. To aid IT-decision makers in making better decisions regarding what modifications to ma...