Preference Elicitation in Constraint-Based Decision Problems

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Friday, April 7, 2006, 13:00pm - Friday, April 7, 2006, 14:00pm

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Preference elicitation is generally required when making or recommending decisions on behalf of users whose utility function is not known with certainty. Although one can engage in elicitation until a utility function is perfectly known, in practice, this is infeasible. This talk tackles this problem in constraint-based optimization. I will first describe a graphical model for utility representation and issues associated with elicitation in this model. I then discuss two methods for optimization with imprecise utility information: a Bayesian approach in which utility function ncertainty is quantified probabilistically; and a distribution-free minimax regret model. Finally, I will describe several heuristic strategies for elicitation.

This work describes several joint projects with: Darius Braziunas, Relu Patrascu, Pascal Poupart and Dale Schuurmans.

Marie desJardins

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