Bargaining with the Black-Box

Knowledge Extraction from the Neural ‘Black Box’ in Ecological Monitoring

Phytoplankton biomass within the Saginaw Bay ecosystem (Lake Huron, Michigan, USA) was characterized as a function of select physical/chemical indicators. The complexity and variability of ecological systems typically make it difficult to model the influences of anthropogenic stressors and/or natural disturbances. Here, Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) were developed to model chlorophyll a con...

Beyond the black box

As developers of SageMath, we show how open software facilitates corrections. “Commercial computer algebra systems are black boxes, and their algorithms are opaque to the users,” complained a trio ofmathematicianswhose “misfortunes” are detailed in a recent Notices article [2]. “We reported the bug on October 7, 2013...By June 2014, nothing had changed ...All we could do was wait.”

Opening the Black Box

Controversy over the aggregate impact of foreign aid has focused on reduced form estimates of the aid-growth link. The causal chain, through which aid affects developmental outcomes including growth, has received much less attention. We address this gap by: (i) specifying a structural model of the main relationships; (ii) estimating the impact of aid on a range of final and intermediate outcome...

Inside the Black Box:

Survey methodologists borrowed the think aloud method from cognitive psychology in order to make respondents’ thinking explicit in a variety of tasks. The method has become a central feature of cognitive interviewing to pretest questionnaires. In adapting the method for pretesting, survey researchers changed it in important ways that may have implications for data quality, either for better or ...

The Settlement Black Box