Building an interactive decision-theoretic problem solver raises a number of issues concerning elicitation of the domain model and presentation of the results. While standard techniques are available for eliciting probability and utility models, the elicitation task is typically time consuming and tedious. Elicitation in decision analysis has required specification of a complete model, even though much of the model may be irrelevant to the problem actually being solved. Furthermore, decision-analytic elicitation requries the skill of an expert to identify what information is important and what simplifying assumptions are appropriate. Problem solving results must be presented to the user in an easily intelligible form and one that facilitates communicating additional requirements to the system if the user is not satisfied with the results.
This symposium will provide a forum for identifying key problems to be addressed and techniques for solving them. Issues to be addressed include: the nature of interaction required by various applications; representations and strategies that facilitate elicitation; inference with incomplete models; use of different representations for communication and inference; incorporation of constraints other than probability and utility; and display of results to facilitate user feedback. A more detailed description of the symposium can be found at
Submissions to the symposium can take one of three forms. We highly encourage electronic transmission in postscript (preferred) or MS Word format to
idts-submissions@cs.washington.edu
Full papers of up to 10 pages will be considered for plenary
presentation. (Authors of full papers may be asked to give poster
presentations depending on the schedule.) Short papers of up to 5
pages will be considered for poster presentation. Parties who would
simply like to participate in the workshop may submit position papers
of up to 2 pages. We welcome demonstrations of working systems. If
you are interested in giving a demo, send email to the above address.