A short introduction to preferences
Subtitle: between artificial intelligence and social choice
By: Francesca Rossi, Kristen Brent Venable, Toby Walsh
Contributors: Venable, Kristen Brent; Walsh, Toby
Series: Synthesis lectures on artificial intelligence and machine learning -- # 14
Publisher: Morgan & Claypool
Published: 2011
Place of publication: San Rafael, Calif. (1537 Fourth Street, San Rafael, CA 94901 USA)
Language: eng
Format: [electronic resource] :
ISBN-13: 9781608455874; 9781608455867
Subjects: Social choice; Decision making; Data processing; Preferences (Philosophy); Reasoning; Artificial intelligence
Other titles: Synthesis digital library of engineering and computer science.
Description: Computational social choice is an expanding field that merges classical topics like economics and voting theory with more modern topics like artificial intelligence, multiagent systems, and computational complexity. This book provides a concise introduction to the main research lines in this field, covering aspects such as preference modelling, uncertainty reasoning, social choice, stable matching, and computational aspects of preference aggregation and manipulation. The book is centered around the notion of preference reasoning, both in the single-agent and the multi-agent setting. It presents the main approaches to modeling and reasoning with preferences, with particular attention to two popular and powerful formalisms, soft constraints and CP-nets. The authors consider preference elicitation and various forms of uncertainty in soft constraints. They review the most relevant results in voting, with special attention to computational social choice. Finally, the book considers preferences in matching problems. The book is intended for students and researchers who may be interested in an introduction to preference reasoning and multi-agent preference aggregation, and who want to know the basic notions and results in computational social choice.
Notes: Part of: Synthesis digital library of engineering and computer science.

Series from website.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 71-87).

Abstract freely available; full-text restricted to subscribers or individual document purchasers.

Also available in print.

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader.
Table of contents: title: 1. Introduction; title: 2. Preference modeling and reasoning; title: 2.1 Constraint reasoning; title: 2.1.1 Constraints; title: 2.1.2 Constraint solvers; title: 2.2 Soft constraints; title: 2.2.1 Specific soft constraint formalisms; title: 2.2.2 General soft constraint formalisms; title: 2.2.3 Computational properties of soft constraints; title: 2.2.4 Bipolar preferences; title: 2.3 CP-nets; title: 2.3.1 Conditional preferences; title: 2.3.2 Preference ordering; title: 2.3.3 Computational properties; title: 2.4 Soft constraints vs. CP-nets; title: 2.4.1 Expressiveness comparison; title: 2.4.2 Approximating CP-nets via soft constraints; title: 2.4.3 CP-nets and hard constraints; title: 2.5 Temporal preferences; title: 2.6 Abstracting, explaining, and eliciting preferences; title: 2.6.1 Abstraction techniques; title: 2.6.2 Explanation generation; title: 2.6.3 Learning and preference elicitation; title: 2.7 Other preference modeling frameworks; title: 2.8 Conclusions; title: 3. Uncertainty in preference reasoning; title: 3.1 Interval-based preferences; title: 3.2 Missing preferences; title: 3.2.1 Interleaving complete search and elicitation; title: 3.2.2 Interleaving local search and elicitation; title: 3.3 Conclusions; title: 4. Aggregating preferences; title: 4.1 Voting; title: 4.1.1 Voting rules; title: 4.1.2 Properties of voting rules; title: 4.1.3 Fairness and manipulation; title: 4.1.4 Single-peaked preferences; title: 4.2 Computational aspects of manipulation and control; title: 4.2.1 Manipulation algorithms; title: 4.2.2 Tie-breaking; title: 4.2.3 Control; title: 4.2.4 Hybrid rules; title: 4.2.5 Manipulation on average; title: 4.2.6 Manipulation in practice; title: 4.2.7 Parameterized complexity; title: 4.3 Mechanism design; title: 4.4 Incomparability; title: 4.5 Uncertainty in preference aggregation; title: 4.5.1 Incomplete profiles; title: 4.5.2 Unknown agenda; title: 4.6 Preference compilation; title: 4.7 Combinatorial domains; title: 4.8 Conclusions; title: 5. Stable marriage problems; title: 5.1 Stability; title: 5.2 Ties and incompleteness; title: 5.3 Manipulation; title: 5.4 Extensions; title: 5.5 Compact preference representation; title: 5.6 Constraint-based formalizations; title: 5.7 Conclusions; title: Bibliography; title: Authors' biographies.