title: Understanding what machine learning produces - Part I: Representations and their comprehensibility

authors: Cunningham, Sally Jo

subjects: computer science

abstract: The aim of many machine learning users is to comprehend the structures that are inferred from a dataset, and such users may be far more interested in understanding the structure of their data than in predicting the outcome of new test data. Part I of this paper surveys representations based on decision trees, production rules and decision graphs that have been developed and used for machine learning. These representations have differing degrees of expressive power, and particular attention is paid to their comprehensibility for non-specialist users. The graphic form in which a structure is portrayed also has a strong effect on comprehensibility, and Part II of this paper develops knowledge visualization techniques that are particularly appropriate to help answer the questions that machine learning users typically ask about the structures produced.

text: Understanding what machine learning produces - Part I: Representations and their comprehensibility The aim of many machine learning users is to comprehend the structures that are inferred from a dataset, and such users may be far more interested in understanding the structure of their data than in predicting the outcome of new test data. Part I of this paper surveys representations based on decision trees, production rules and decision graphs that have been developed and used for machine learning. These representations have differing degrees of expressive power, and particular attention is paid to their comprehensibility for non-specialist users. The graphic form in which a structure is portrayed also has a strong effect on comprehensibility, and Part II of this paper develops knowledge visualization techniques that are particularly appropriate to help answer the questions that machine learning users typically ask about the structures produced.

year: 1996-10

title: Governance and conflict in Pakistan: Developing a Conflict Prevention and Reduction (CPR) model to promote peace in Baluchistan and the Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA)

authors: Karim, Muhammad Arsalan

subjects: Conflict Prevention and Reduction

abstract: Pakistan is an unstable country, home to a single religious nation made up of four major regional ethnic sub-nations. The inability of the political leadership of Pakistan to successfully connect and merge the interests of the nation and sub-nations with the interests of the state has been a longstanding issue. This has weakened the central political institution and allowed the military and civil bureaucracies, feudal elites and oligarch families to dominate the central government, preventing it from delivering good governance to the nation and sub-nations. These key central stakeholders allow the tribal chiefs, and religious and ethnic elites to dominate the regional political institutions and to become key regional stakeholders, triggering religious and ethnic conflict. Out of the four major sub-nation regions in Pakistan, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and Baluchistan are hotbeds of religious terrorism and ethnic insurgency, generating a conflict that affects the rest of the country.

Through a mix of secondary data and primary information (that includes field interviews and surveys) gathered from Baluchistan, FATA and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), this thesis reveals the existence of sub-states that operate as discrete regional systems of socio-political governance. The study provides empirical evidence that the religious and ethnic conflicts in Pakistan are produced and sustained by these socio-political structures and their governance mechanisms. These conflicts exist in FATA and Baluchistan but not in KP – this difference between the regions offers an opportunity to consider why KP has been more successful than FATA and Baluchistan. This, in turn, provides an opportunity to consider why the governance structures and mechanisms in KP have been successful, and in the process to develop a new Conflict Prevention and Reduction (CPR) model focused on improving governance in FATA and Baluchistan. This could reduce violence and terrorism in Pakistan, while the model has potential relevance for fractured nations beyond Pakistan.

text: Governance and conflict in Pakistan: Developing a Conflict Prevention and Reduction (CPR) model to promote peace in Baluchistan and the Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA) Pakistan is an unstable country, home to a single religious nation made up of four major regional ethnic sub-nations. The inability of the political leadership of Pakistan to successfully connect and merge the interests of the nation and sub-nations with the interests of the state has been a longstanding issue. This has weakened the central political institution and allowed the military and civil bureaucracies, feudal elites and oligarch families to dominate the central government, preventing it from delivering good governance to the nation and sub-nations. These key central stakeholders allow the tribal chiefs, and religious and ethnic elites to dominate the regional political institutions and to become key regional stakeholders, triggering religious and ethnic conflict. Out of the four major sub-nation regions in Pakistan, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and Baluchistan are hotbeds of religious terrorism and ethnic insurgency, generating a conflict that affects the rest of the country.

Through a mix of secondary data and primary information (that includes field interviews and surveys) gathered from Baluchistan, FATA and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), this thesis reveals the existence of sub-states that operate as discrete regional systems of socio-political governance. The study provides empirical evidence that the religious and ethnic conflicts in Pakistan are produced and sustained by these socio-political structures and their governance mechanisms. These conflicts exist in FATA and Baluchistan but not in KP – this difference between the regions offers an opportunity to consider why KP has been more successful than FATA and Baluchistan. This, in turn, provides an opportunity to consider why the governance structures and mechanisms in KP have been successful, and in the process to develop a new Conflict Prevention and Reduction (CPR) model focused on improving governance in FATA and Baluchistan. This could reduce violence and terrorism in Pakistan, while the model has potential relevance for fractured nations beyond Pakistan.

year: 2022

title: To act or not to act? That is the question!

authors: Bruce Ferguson, Pip

abstract: The year was 2003. I was a new Research Manager working in a Māori tertiary institution that had a history of inequitable treatment by government, through not receiving establishment funding that had gone unproblematically to non-Māori institutions. Repeating a common pattern in New Zealand, our government had decided to implement a research funding scheme, to be measured at the level of the individual academic. My institution’s decision to participate in the PBRF was not without its difficulties, and it is here that the ethics of participation become problematic. This chapter is about our ability to articulate our values, to show how we work these out in our practice, and how we are accountable to ourselves and others for that practice. Would I, with the benefit of hindsight, have encouraged my institution to enter the PBRF again?

text: To act or not to act? That is the question! The year was 2003. I was a new Research Manager working in a Māori tertiary institution that had a history of inequitable treatment by government, through not receiving establishment funding that had gone unproblematically to non-Māori institutions. Repeating a common pattern in New Zealand, our government had decided to implement a research funding scheme, to be measured at the level of the individual academic. My institution’s decision to participate in the PBRF was not without its difficulties, and it is here that the ethics of participation become problematic. This chapter is about our ability to articulate our values, to show how we work these out in our practice, and how we are accountable to ourselves and others for that practice. Would I, with the benefit of hindsight, have encouraged my institution to enter the PBRF again?

year: 2013