Improves generative models for cost-sensitive decisions.
problem Generative models lack awareness of decision costs.
method Integrates a decision loss into the training objective.
result Improves cost-sensitive forecast accuracy.
Lock-in, the escalating commitment of decision-makers to an ineffective course of action, has the potential to explain the large cost overruns in large scale transportation infrastructure projects. Lock-in can occur both at the decision-making level (before the decision to build) and at the project level (after the dec…
Using a methodology similar to that used the in the worldwide research, the cost performance of Dutch large-scale transport infrastructure projects is determined. In the Netherlands, cost overruns are as common as cost underruns but because cost overruns are larger than cost underruns projects on average have a cost ov…
The paper develops a method to learn robust decision policies from observational data, reducing high-cost outcomes.
problem Learning safe decision policies from observational data with high-risk outcomes.
method Develops a method to learn policies that reduce high-cost outcomes, valid under finite samples and uneven feature overlap.
result Validates the method with real and synthetic data, providing statistical bounds on decision costs.
Improved distributed learning with reduced communication costs.
problem Efficient communication in resource-constrained environments for distributed learning.
method Proposed a cost-effective partial communication protocol.
result Communication cost is reduced to O(logT), improving significantly on full communication. Study impacts of feeding cost risk on aquaculture valuation and decision making.
problem Impact of stochastic feeding costs on aquaculture valuation and decision making.
method Using Schwartz-2-factor model and deep neural networks to infer decision boundary.
result Accounting for stochastic feeding costs leads to superior performance in decision rules.
Develops an actor-critic algorithm for risk-sensitive Markov decision processes.
problem Risk-sensitive cost criterion in Markov decision processes.
method Actor-critic algorithm with function approximation.
result Asymptotic convergence of the actor-critic algorithm.
The paper explores dynamic regret with switching cost in online decision making.
problem The relation between dynamic regret and switching cost in online decision making.
method Investigates two classic online settings: Online Algorithms (OA) and Online Convex Optimization (OCO). Provides a new theoretical analysis framework.
result The switching cost impacts dynamic regret differently in OA and has no impact in OCO.
Decision makers, such as doctors and judges, make crucial decisions such as recommending treatments to patients, and granting bails to defendants on a daily basis. Such decisions typically involve weighting the potential benefits of taking an action against the costs involved. In this work, we aim to automate this task…
A new method for decision-focused learning reduces computational cost.
problem Efficiently solving combinatorial problems with uncertain parameters.
method Reframed as cost-sensitive multi-output regression, with novel loss components.
result Comparable downstream task quality with reduced computational cost.
Extends expected value framework for cost-sensitive causal decision-making.
problem Optimizing operational decision-making with cost-sensitive causal classification.
method Introduces a cost-sensitive decision boundary based on estimated individual treatment effects, positive outcome probability, and cost parameters.
result Effective in maximizing expected causal profit, outperforming cost-insensitive ranking approach.
We demonstrate an application of risk-sensitive reinforcement learning to optimizing execution in limit order book markets. We represent taking order execution decisions based on limit order book knowledge by a Markov Decision Process; and train a trading agent in a market simulator, which emulates multi-agent interact…
Decision makers, such as doctors and judges, make crucial decisions such as recommending treatments to patients, and granting bails to defendants on a daily basis. Such decisions typically involve weighting the potential benefits of taking an action against the costs involved. In this work, we aim to automate this task…
SUPAID automates vehicle rollout decisions for fleet managers.
problem Automating supervisor's vehicle rollout decisions to prevent costly mistakes.
method Rule mining approach based on 'one-way efficiency' assumption.
result SUPAID significantly reduces costs in a real transit agency setting.
Q-learning for average cost MDPs gets a concentration bound.
problem Finding bounds for Q-learning in average cost MDPs.
method Derives a concentration bound using shortest path problem equivalence.
result Numerical comparison with relative value iteration shows the bound's effectiveness.
Comparison of decision curve analysis and cost curves for model evaluation.
problem Evaluating classification performance across different operating contexts.
method Comparison of Decision Curve Analysis (DCA) and Cost Curves.
result DCA and Cost Curves are closely related, with Brier curves being more generally applicable.
We consider the problem of learning decision rules for prediction with feature budget constraint. In particular, we are interested in pruning an ensemble of decision trees to reduce expected feature cost while maintaining high prediction accuracy for any test example. We propose a novel 0-1 integer program formulation …
Paper proposes consistent estimators for learning to defer decisions to experts.
problem Learning algorithms often ignore expert decision-making in practical scenarios.
method Reduction to cost sensitive learning, novel surrogate loss for consistent estimation.
result Effective approach demonstrated on various tasks, showing consistency.
Framework learns linear programs from optimal decisions.
problem Learning linear programs from optimal decisions is challenging.
method Gradient-based framework for learning linear programs from optimal decisions.
result Successfully learns linear programs and multi-commodity flow instances.
Digital twin reduces costs in various fields.
problem High costs in decision-making processes.
method Use of digital twin model for cost reduction.
result Digital twin acts as a cost reduction method.
Leasing is a popular channel to market new cars. Pricing a leasing contract is complicated because the leasing rate embodies an expectation of the residual value of the car after contract expiration. To aid lessors in their pricing decisions, the paper develops resale price forecasting models. A peculiarity of the leas…
Many real-life decision-making situations allow further relevant information to be acquired at a specific cost, for example, in assessing the health status of a patient we may decide to take additional measurements such as diagnostic tests or imaging scans before making a final assessment. Acquiring more relevant infor…
Study optimal periodic dividend strategies for risky businesses with transaction costs.
problem Optimal periodic dividend strategies for spectrally positive Lévy risk processes with fixed transaction costs.
method Investigates periodic (bu,bl) strategies for a Poisson arrival process of decision times. result A periodic (bu,bl) strategy is optimal with lump sum dividends net of transaction costs. Meta-learning interpretable decision trees with synthetic data.
problem Lack of efficient, scalable methods for generating synthetic data for decision tree meta-learning.
method Synthetic generation of near-optimal decision trees using the MetaTree transformer architecture.
result Meta-learning of decision trees achieves performance comparable to real-world data or optimal decision trees, with significant computational cost reduction.
Method trains neural network for optimal decisions from stochastic simulators.
problem Suboptimal decisions from SBI approximations of posterior distributions.
method Trains neural network on simulated data to predict optimal actions.
result Induces similar cost as true posterior for optimal actions.
New method minimizes regret in AMDP with high probability.
problem Pessimistic regret analysis in AMDP.
method Developed a new policy search method achieving optimistic regret.
result Achieved sublinear optimistic regret with high probability.
This study integrates cost-sensitive and causal classification methods.
problem Improving classification model performance in business decision-making.
method A unifying evaluation framework for cost-sensitive and causal classification.
result Conventional classification is a specific case of causal classification.
Proposes a new method for decision-aware learning in optimization.
problem Contextual linear optimization with cost prediction errors.
method Reweighing prediction error by decision regret for decision-aware predictor.
result Improves over predict-then-optimize framework for misspecified models.
The paper optimizes forecasting for risk-adjusted decisions under trading frictions.
problem Optimizing forecasting accuracy for investment decisions in the presence of transaction costs.
method Develops a utility-weighted calibration criterion to minimize decision loss net of costs.
result Utility-weighted calibration reduces decision loss by over 30% and improves Sharpe ratio.
We demonstrate a limitation of discounted expected utility, a standard approach for representing the preference to risk when future cost is discounted. Specifically, we provide an example of the preference of a decision maker that appears to be rational but cannot be represented with any discounted expected utility. A …
Ability for accurate hospital case cost modelling and prediction is critical for efficient health care financial management and budgetary planning. A variety of regression machine learning algorithms are known to be effective for health care cost predictions. The purpose of this experiment was to build an Azure Machine…
Neural network approximates Bayesian decision-making parameters.
problem Analytical intractability of Bayesian decision-making in naturalistic tasks.
method Neural amortization of Bayesian actor model.
result Efficient gradient-based inference of Bayesian actor model parameters.
Paper presents an efficient algorithm for linear MDP with low switching cost.
problem Large state space reinforcement learning problems with low switching cost.
method First algorithm for linear MDP with low switching cost, achieving near-optimal regret and switching cost.
result Regret bound of $\widetilde{O}\left(\sqrt{d^3H^4K}
ight)$ and near-optimal switching cost of $O\left(d H\log K
ight)$.
New algorithm reduces costs in wind energy systems by minimizing decision changes.
problem Costs associated with decision changes in wind energy systems.
method Episodic CBO with movement costs using Gaussian Process and mirror descent.
result Our algorithm consistently outperforms standard CBO in altitude optimization.
A set of introductory notes on the subject of data classification using a linear classifier and least-squares cost function, and the negative effect of the presence of outliers on the decision boundary of the linear discriminant. We also show how a simple scaling could make the outlier less significant, thereby obtaini…
Unified method for learning from selectively labeled data.
problem Classification with selectively labeled data from multiple decision-makers.
method Unified cost-sensitive learning (UCL) approach.
result Unified method for robust classification in selective labeling.
UCRL-CMDP algorithm optimizes RL with constraints on average costs.
problem Optimizing RL in MDPs with average cost constraints.
method Model-based RL algorithms maximizing reward while keeping costs within bounds.
result UCRL-CMDP algorithm's expected regret is upper-bounded by $T^{2\slash 3}$.
Study optimal investment and consumption strategies with various transaction costs.
problem Investment and consumption decisions under varying transaction costs.
method Dynamic programming and singular perturbation expansion for small cost-to-wealth ratio.
result Derive leading-order asymptotic formulas for no-trade regions and trading boundaries.
Study links cognitive effort to thermodynamic principles, optimizing decision-making.
problem Understanding the energy cost of decision-making in living systems.
method Applied Landauer's principle to analyze belief dynamics in a two-armed bandit game.
result Cognitive energy cost correlates with optimal decision-making outcomes.
New method optimizes costly evaluations in Bayesian optimization.
problem Costly evaluations in BO methods, especially in hyperparameter tuning.
method Formulated as a CMDP, developed rollout approximation for optimal policy.
result Improved cost efficiency over standard BO methods.
This paper proposes CSADA to make DNNs cost-sensitive.
problem Over-parameterization challenges cost-sensitive classification in DNNs.
method CSADA framework using adversarial data augmentation.
result CSADA effectively minimizes overall cost and reduces critical errors.
ARL uses queries to learn rewards, focusing on cost vs. reward value.
problem How to efficiently use queries to learn rewards in reinforcement learning.
method Proposed and evaluated heuristic approaches for ARL in multi-armed bandits and MDPs.
result Challenging aspects of ARL highlighted, including intractability of value computation.
The hierarchical structure of production planning has the advantage of assigning different decision variables to their respective time horizons and therefore ensures their manageability. However, the restrictive structure of this top-down approach implying that upper level decisions are the constraints for lower level …
New algorithms improve on consistency and robustness in convex function chasing with black-box advice.
problem Minimizing cost in normed vector space with black-box advice for convex function chasing.
method Two novel algorithms: INTERP and BDINTERP, exploiting convexity to achieve improved consistency and robustness.
result BDINTERP achieves near-optimal consistency-robustness trade-off for α-polyhedral cost functions.
As more data are produced each day, and faster, data stream mining is growing in importance, making clear the need for algorithms able to fast process these data. Data stream mining algorithms are meant to be solutions to extract knowledge online, specially tailored from continuous data problem. Many of the current alg…
A new algorithm reduces communication costs for collaborative decision-making across clients.
problem Collaborative decision-making with sparse rewards and heterogeneous contexts.
method Federated Lasso algorithm for sparse linear contextual bandits.
result Achieves near-optimal regret with logarithmic communication costs.
A new procedure for learning cost-sensitive SVM(CS-SVM) classifiers is proposed. The SVM hinge loss is extended to the cost sensitive setting, and the CS-SVM is derived as the minimizer of the associated risk. The extension of the hinge loss draws on recent connections between risk minimization and probability elicitat…
Transformer learns shipping costs more accurately than traditional methods.
problem Inaccurate shipping cost estimates lead to poor financial decisions.
method Proposes Rate Card Transformer (RCT) using self-attention to encode shipping information.
result Cost predictions made by RCT have 28.82% less error compared to GBDT models.