Querying Similar (Tropical Cyclone) Events via Metric Learning on Multivariate Spatial-Temporal Data Sequences

GRAND Seminar 11:00 am, Nov. 18, Thr., 2010, ENGR 4201

Christopher Hazard
North Carolina State University

Abstract:

In multiagent interactions, such as e-commerce and peer-to-peer file sharing, being able to accurately assess the trustworthiness of other agents is important for agents to protect themselves from losing utility. We focus on an agents' discount factors (time preference of utility) as a direct measure of the agent's trustworthiness in a number of settings. We prove that an agent's discount factor, when in context of the agent's valuations and capabilities, is isomorphic to trustworthiness for a set of reasonably general assumptions and definitions. Further, we propose a general list of desiderata for trust systems and discuss how discount factors as trustworthiness meet these desiderata and discuss how discount factors are a robust measure when entering commitments with adverse selection and moral hazards.

Despite the large body of work in reputation and trust in dynamic multiagent environments, no metrics exist to directly and quantitatively evaluate and compare reputation systems. We present a common conceptual interface for reputation systems and a set of four measurable desiderata that are broadly applicable across multiple domains, inspired by dynamical systems theory. We discuss the implications, strengths, and limitations of our desiderata. Our discount factor as trustworthiness model performs well across the desiderata when measured against other established reputation models from the literature in a reciprocity setting.

Bio:

Christopher Hazard is a Post-Doctoral Researcher at North Carolina State University, with interests in emergent behavior, strategic behavior, and scalability in multiagent systems systems. Dr. Hazard has also worked at Motorola and Kiva Systems. He is also the founder of the game studio Hazardous Software, and the producer of Achron, a real-time strategy game which permits time travel.