Saturday 24 July 2010

PhD application

As well as the patient-appointments scenario which I have, i.e. making as many patients as possible happy with their allocated appointment, another one could be to give as many employees as possible a task which they like (or a task which is within their capacity perhaps).

Friday 23 July 2010

74, Argumentative Alternating Offers

Good paper ('Argumentative Alternating Offers', Nabila Hadidi, Yannis Dimopolous, Pavlos Moraitis, 2010). Understandable. Always a good positive feeling understanding a paper!

Paper is about introducing argumentation to the "alternating offers (negotiation) protocol" and separating (making a distinction) between "practical" and "epistemic" arguments. Worth nothing that the work is for the 2-agent setting and arguments are treated as abstract entities.

A few questions to ask of the author(s):
  • Are (would) the conflict relations (Re and Rp) (be) shared by both agents? (see page 442)
  • Are (would) the preference relations (>=p and >=e) (be) shared by both agents? (see page 442)
  • Why is the assumption on page 443 that all practical arguments are 'useful' for some offer necessary?
  • The 'reject' case on page 445 (and explained on page 447): Why is it so? What does it mean for arguments and offers to be removed from the agent's theory?
  • Are offers ever added to the agents known offers (i.e. is it dynamic or static)?

73, Opportunistic Belief Reconciliation During Distributed Interactions

Tried reading this paper ('Opportunistic Belief Reconciliation During Distributed Interactions', Paul Martin, David Robertson, Michael Rovatsos, 2010) but couldn't understand why and what it is. Seems kind of related to my AABA paper.