IFORS 2021 keynote
Presentation
Mihaela van der Schaar will deliver a keynote talk at the Conference of the International Federation of Operational Research Societies (IFORS 2021), hosted by the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society.
Title
Quantitative epistemology: conceiving a new human-machine partnership
Abstract
Quantitative epistemology is a new and transformational area of research pioneered by our lab in Cambridge as a strand of machine learning aimed at understanding, supporting, and improving human decision-making. We are developing machine learning models that capture how humans acquire new information, how they pay attention to such information, how their beliefs may be represented, how their internal models may be structured, how these different levels of knowledge are leveraged in the form of actions, and how such knowledge is learned and updated over time. Because our approach is driven by observational data in studying knowledge as well as using machine learning methods for supporting and improving knowledge acquisition and its impact on decision-making, we call this “quantitative epistemology.”
Our methods are aimed at studying human decision-making, identifying potential suboptimalities in beliefs and decision processes (such as cognitive biases, selective attention, imperfect retention of past experience, etc.), and understanding risk attitudes and their implications for learning and decision-making. This would allow us to construct decision support systems that provide humans with information pertinent to their intended actions, their possible alternatives and counterfactual outcomes, as well as other evidence to empower better decision-making.
Location and local date/time
This event will take place online on August 26 at 12:00 KST (04:00 BST).
About the event
IFORS is an international conference held every three years to bring together academia, practitioners and experts in the field of Management Science from more than 60 countries and to contribute to its development through mutual academic and information exchange. Since its inaugural meeting in the United Kingdom in 1957, this conference has become a large international academic conference involving more than 2,000 professionals from the United States, Europe, Asia, Oceania and South America.