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Acquiring an Optimal Amount of Information for Choosing from Alternatives

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Cooperative Information Agents VI (CIA 2002)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 2446))

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Abstract

An agent operating in the real world must often choose from among alternatives in incomplete information environments, and frequently it can obtain additional information about them. Obtaining information can result in a better decision, but the agent may incur expenses for obtaining each unit of information. The problem of finding an optimal strategy for obtaining information appears in many domains. For example, in ecommerce when choosing a seller, and in solving programming problems when choosing heuristics. We focus on cases where the agent has to decide in advance on howmuch information to obtain about each alternative. In addition, each unit of information about an alternative gives the agent only partial information about the alternative, and the range of each information unit is continues. We first formalize the problem of deciding how many information units to obtain about each alternative, and we specify the expected utility function of the agent, given a combination of information units. This function should be maximized by choosing the optimal number of information units. We proceed by suggesting methods for finding the optimal allocation of information units between the different alternatives.

This work was supported in part by NSF under Grant No. IIS-0208608.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, Bar-Ilan University, 52900, Ramat-Gan, Israel

    Rina Azoulay-Schwartz & Sarit Kraus

  2. Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, University of Maryland, 20742, College Park, MD

    Sarit Kraus

Authors
  1. Rina Azoulay-Schwartz
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  2. Sarit Kraus
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence, DFKI GmbH, Stuhlsatzenhausweg 3, 66123, Saarbrücken, Germany

    Matthias Klusch

  2. School of Engineering (ESCET), University Rey Juan Carlos, Campus de Mostoles, Calle Tulipan s/n, 28933, Madrid, Spain

    Sascha Ossowski

  3. IBM - Haifa Research Labs, Haifa University, Mount Carmel, 31905, Haifa, Israel

    Onn Shehory

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© 2002 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Azoulay-Schwartz, R., Kraus, S. (2002). Acquiring an Optimal Amount of Information for Choosing from Alternatives. In: Klusch, M., Ossowski, S., Shehory, O. (eds) Cooperative Information Agents VI. CIA 2002. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 2446. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45741-0_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45741-0_12

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-44173-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-45741-1

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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