What is the relation between (a) “full” or “outright” belief and (b) the various levels of confidence that agents can have in the propositions that concern them? This paper argues for a new answer to this question. Decision theory implies that in making decisions, rational agents must treat certain propositions as though they were completely certain; but on most forms of decision theory, these ...

Algorithms that use approximate word matching are widely used in different areas. We present the work in progress on a method that has the potential to select extremely fast from a large dictionary of correct words a small set of words that are proximate to a given input erroneous word. The method can be applied for a large class of distances based on weighted edit operations. By given distance...

We study the classes of languages defined by valence automata with rational target sets (or equivalently, regular valence grammars with rational target sets), where the valence monoid is drawn from the important class of polycyclic monoids. We show that for polycyclic monoids of rank 2 or more, such automata accept exactly the context-free languages. For the polycyclic monoid of rank 1 (that is...

If K is a field, and g, h ∈ K(x) are rational functions of degree greater than one, then f = g ◦ h = g(h) is their (functional) composition, (g, h) is a (functional) decomposition of f , and f is a decomposable rational function. The univariate rational functional decomposition problem can be stated as follows: given f ∈ K(x), determine whether there exists a decomposition (g, h) of f with g an...

Given a finite set of words w1, . . . , wn independently drawn according to a fixed unknown distribution law P called a stochastic language, an usual goal in Grammatical Inference is to infer an estimate of P in some class of probabilistic models, such as Probabilistic Automata (PA). Here, we study the class S R (Σ) of rational stochastic languages, which consists in stochastic languages that c...

data envelopment analysis (dea) is a method to evaluate the relative efficiency of decision making units (dmus). in this method, the issue has always been to determine a set of weights for each dmu which often caused many problems. since the dea models also have the multi-objective linear programming (molp) problems nature, a rational relationship can be established between molp and dea problem...

We describe an algorithm that determines a set of unramified covers of a given hyperelliptic curve, with the property that any rational point will lift to one of the covers. In particular, if the algorithm returns an empty set, then the hyperelliptic curve has no rational points. This provides a relatively efficiently tested criterion for solvability of hyperelliptic curves. We also discuss app...

More often than not, recently popular structuralist interpretations of physical theories leave the central concept of a structure insufficiently precisified. The incipient causal sets approach to quantum gravity offers a paradigmatic case of a physical theory predestined to be interpreted in structuralist terms. It is shown how employing structuralism lends itself to a natural interpretation of...

We introduce the notion of Hypergraph Weighted Model (HWM) that generically associates a tensor network to a hypergraph and then computes a value by tensor contractions directed by its hyperedges. A series r defined on a hypergraph family is said to be recognizable if there exists a HWM that computes it. This model generalizes the notion of rational series on strings and trees. We prove some pr...

Let G be a finitely generated virtually-free group. We consider the Birget-Rhodes expansion of G, which yields an inverse monoid and which is denoted by IM(G) in the following. We show that for a finite idempotent presentation P , the word problem of a quotient monoid IM(G)/P can be solved in linear time on a RAM. The uniform word problem, where G and the presentation P are also part of the inp...