Over the last 30 years or so many results have appeared on the descriptional complexity of machines with limited resources. Since these results have appeared in a variety of different contexts, our goal here is to provide a survey of these results. Particular emphasis is put on limiting resources (e.g., nondeterminism, ambiguity, lookahead, etc.) for various types of finite state machines, push...

We analyze different methods of sorting and selecting a set of objects by their intrinsic value, via pairwise comparisons whose outcome is uncertain. After discussing the limits of repeated Round Robins, two new methods are presented: The ran-fil requires no previous knowledge on the set under consideration, yet displaying good performances even in the least favorable case. Themin-entmethod set...

This paper presents a probabilistic model for studying the question: given n search resources, where in the search tree should they be ezpended? Specifically, a least-cost root-to-leaf path is sought in a random tree. The tree is known to be binary and complete to depth N. Arc costs are independently set either to 1 (with probability p ) or to 0 (with probability l-p ). The cost of a leaf is th...

In this paper we present our preliminary investigation of rational agents who can learn from their experience. We claim that such agents need to combine at least three attributes – deductive reasoning based on currently possessed knowledge, inductive learning from their history, and awareness of passing time (including the necessity to commit computational resources to tasks which need to be ca...

In this paper we propose strategies for estimating performance of a classifier when labels cannot be obtained for the whole test set. The number of test instances which can be labeled is very small compared to the whole test data size. The goal then is to obtain a precise estimate of classifier performance using as little labeling resource as possible. Specifically, we try to answer, how to sel...

Several temporal planning systems (e.g. Allen & Koomen, Descartes , parcPLAN) divide the planning process into two distinct phases: action introduction and plan verification. This thesis develops a detailed model of these two phases and their “interface”, and shows how the model can be exploited to enhance the efficiency of plan generation. The main focus is on plan verification, and the contex...

This article describes how a small liberal arts college library created a digital library using existing staff and financial resources. The Hekman Digital Archive (HDA) was created using a digital media archive module of the library’s integrated library system, and is maintained by one library staff member with the help of numerous student assistants.

Pictures play an important role in the communication process. Communicative goals can be expressed for instance with the specific use of different levels of abstraction in pictures. Especially in textbooks and scientific publications, images are used where the level of detail of different objects is deliberately changed to express the importance of an object in the picture. In this paper we int...

The construction and operation of large-scale quantum information devices presents a grand challenge. A major issue is the effective control of coherent evolution, which requires accurate knowledge of the system dynamics that may vary from device to device. We review strategies for obtaining such knowledge from minimal initial resources and in an efficient manner, and apply these to the problem...