Decision theory has changed considerably in the last decade. In behavioral decision theory, a large number of studies have shown that human decision making is inherently adaptive and constructive. In prescriptive decision theory, we have witnessed a move from an alternative-focused approach to a value-focused approach. In this paper, we discuss the implications of these new ideas in behavioral ...

Scientists and philosophers have long wrestled with the problem of how we understand and make sense of our world. There are both descriptive and prescriptive approaches to understanding our world. On the descriptive side, theories of cognition, perception and thinking describe how we humans organize stimuli and make sense out of them. On the prescriptive side, there are two approaches to making...

Business analytics is becoming more and more important nowadays. Up to now predictive analytics appears to be much more applied in practice than prescriptive analytics. We argue that although optimization is used to obtain predictive models, and predictive tools are used to forecast parameters in optimization models, still the deep relation between the predictive and prescriptive analytics is n...

Traditional robots [Siegwart, 2004] rely for their function on computing to store internal representations of their goals and environment and to coordinate sensing and any actuating of components required in response. Moving robotics to the single-molecule level is possible in principle, but faces the limited ability of individual molecules to store complex information and programs. One strateg...

The importance of making good decisions is well-known in the business world and the perception of decision making as rational choice is the most common view. The amount of information involved in many decision making situations has increased dramatically in recent years and support of some kind is often needed. Consequently, fields like Business Intelligence (BI) and Decision Support Systems (D...

The processes of eliciting user requirements and formalising these into specifications are critical for the success of highly interactive systems. These processes are still poorly understood, partly because current methods are usually ad hoc and lack any theoretical basis. A number of researchers have used Activity Theory (AT) to refine these processes and have met with some success. To date, t...

ANSI/ASHRAE/IESNA 90.1 Energy Standard for Buildings except Low-Rise Residential Buildings is the benchmark code of U.S. local regulations. In addition to provide a set of minimum mandatory requirements for energy-using components (prescriptive approach), the standard includes in the Appendix G a more flexible path to attest performances significantly better than code minimum (performance-based...

CONTEXT Despite advances related to the provision of emergency contraception in Canada, particularly the granting of independent prescriptive authority to pharmacists in 2000, little is known about the ways in which women perceive potential barriers to using it. METHODS In 2004, an ethnically diverse sample of 52 women living in Greater Vancouver participated in interviews that were analyzed ...

In model-driven engineering (MDE), models are mostly used in prescriptive ways for system engineering. While prescriptive models are indeed an important ingredient to realize a system, for later phases in the systems’ lifecycles additional model types are beneficial to use. Unfortunately, current MDE approaches mostly neglect the information upstream in terms of descriptive models from operatio...