Date Available

5-6-2021

Year of Publication

2021

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Document Type

Doctoral Dissertation

College

Engineering

Department/School/Program

Computer Science

First Advisor

Dr. Miroslaw Truszczynski

Abstract

Agents make decisions based on their preferences. Thus, to predict their decisions one has to learn the agent's preferences. A key step in the learning process is selecting a model to represent those preferences. We studied this problem by borrowing techniques from the algorithm selection problem to analyze preference example sets and select the most appropriate preference representation for learning. We approached this problem in multiple steps.

First, we determined which representations to consider. For this problem we developed the notion of preference representation language subsumption, which compares representations based on their expressive power. Subsumption creates a hierarchy of preference representations based solely on which preference orders they can express. By applying this analysis to preference representation languages over combinatorial domains we found that some languages are better for learning preference orders than others.

Subsumption, however, does not tell the whole story. In the case of languages which approximate each other (another piece of useful information for learning) the subsumption relation cannot tell us which languages might serve as good approximations of others. How well one language approximates another often requires customized techniques. We developed such techniques for two important preference representation languages, conditional lexicographic preference models (CLPMs) and conditional preference networks (CP-nets).

Second, we developed learning algorithms for highly expressive preference representations. To this end, we investigated using simulated annealing techniques to learn both ranking preference formulas (RPFs) and preference theories (PTs) preference programs.

We demonstrated that simulated annealing is an effective approach to learn preferences under many different conditions. This suggested that more general learning strategies might lead to equally good or even better results. We studied this possibility by considering artificial neural networks (ANNs). Our research showed that ANNs can outperform classical models at deciding dominance, but have several significant drawbacks as preference reasoning models.

Third, we developed a method for determining which representations match which example sets. For this classification task we considered two methods. In the first method we selected a series of features and used those features as input to a linear feed-forward ANN. The second method converts the example set into a graph and uses a graph convolutional neural network (GCNN). Between these two methods we found that the feature set approach works better.

By completing these steps we have built the foundations of a portfolio based approach for learning preferences. We assembled a simple version of such a system as a proof of concept and tested its usefulness.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.13023/etd.2021.139

Funding Information

This work was partially funded by the National Science Foundation under the grant number IIS-1618783 from 2017-2020.

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