How ought you to evaluate your options if you're uncertain about what's fundamentally valuable? A prominent response is Expected Value Maximisation (EVM)—the view that under axiological uncertainty, an option is better than another if and only if it has the greater expected value across axiologies. But the expected value of an option depends on quantitative probability and value facts, and in particular on value comparisons across axiologies. We need to explain what it is for such facts to hold. Also, EVM is by no means self-evident. We need an argument to defend that it’s true. This book introduces an axiomatic approach to answer these worries. It provides an explication of what EVM means by use of representation theorems: intertheoretic comparisons can be understood in terms of facts about which options are better than which, and mutatis mutandis for intratheoretic comparisons and axiological probabilities. And it provides a systematic argument to the effect that EVM is true: the theory can be vindicated through simple axioms. The result is a formally cogent and philosophically compelling extension of standard decision theory, and original take on the problem of axiological or normative uncertainty.

Computer-based information technologies have been extensively used to help industries manage their processes and information systems hereby - come their nervous center. More specially, databases are designed to s- port the data storage, processing, and retrieval activities related to data management in information systems. Database management systems p- vide efficient task support and database systems are the key to impleme- ing industrial data management. Industrial data management requires da- base technique support. Industrial applications, however, are typically data and knowledge intensive applications and have some unique character- tics that makes their management difficult. Besides, some new techniques such as Web, artificial intelligence, and etc. have been introduced into - dustrial applications. These unique characteristics and usage of new te- nologies have put many potential requirements on industrial data mana- ment, which challenge today’s database systems and promote their evolvement. Viewed from database technology, information modeling in databases can be identified at two levels: (conceptual) data modeling and (logical) database modeling. This results in conceptual (semantic) data model and logical database model. Generally a conceptual data model is designed and then the designed conceptual data model will be transformed into a chosen logical database schema. Database systems based on logical database model are used to build information systems for data mana- ment. Much attention has been directed at conceptual data modeling of - dustrial information systems. Product data models, for example, can be views as a class of semantic data models (i. e.

Enriching database models to allow the user to deal with fuzzy and uncertain information has been of scientists' concern for years. This book presents the latest research results in dealing with fuzziness and uncertainty in object-oriented databases. The readership will be researchers and engineers interested in databases and software engineering programming.

Uncertain Information Processing in Expert Systems systematically and critically examines probabilistic and rule-based (compositional, MYCIN-like) systems, the two most important families of expert systems dealing with uncertainty. The book features a detailed introduction to probabilistic systems (including methods using graphical models and methods of knowledge integration), an analysis of compositional systems based on algebraic considerations, an application of graphical models, and the Dempster-Shafer theory of evidence and its use in expert systems. The book will be useful to anyone working in artificial intelligence, statistical computing, symbolic logic, and expert systems.

In Risk Analysis of Complex and Uncertain Systems acknowledged risk authority Tony Cox shows all risk practitioners how Quantitative Risk Assessment (QRA) can be used to improve risk management decisions and policies. It develops and illustrates QRA methods for complex and uncertain biological, engineering, and social systems – systems that have behaviors that are just too complex to be modeled accurately in detail with high confidence – and shows how they can be applied to applications including assessing and managing risks from chemical carcinogens, antibiotic resistance, mad cow disease, terrorist attacks, and accidental or deliberate failures in telecommunications network infrastructure. This book was written for a broad range of practitioners, including decision risk analysts, operations researchers and management scientists, quantitative policy analysts, economists, health and safety risk assessors, engineers, and modelers.

"American Marines in an uncertain world"--Cover. Examines the popular image of Marines, who have become a familiar icon of American life.

This self-contained book provides systematic instructive analysis of uncertain systems of the following types: ordinary differential equations, impulsive equations, equations on time scales, singularly perturbed differential equations, and set differential equations. Each chapter contains new conditions of stability of unperturbed motion of the abo