NE Seminars

Thursday, September 6, 2001

• Yakov Ben-Haim, Israel Institute of Technology
• "Info-Gap Decision Theory: Decisions under Severe Uncertainty"
• Host: Robin Gardner
• Abstract:
  
  Strategic planners, engineering designers and decision-makers in general often face severe lack of information. In this talk we discuss a non-probabilistic paradigm of uncertainty which quantifies the information gap between what is known, and what needs to be known for an optimal decision. These "info-gap" models of uncertainty underlie a decision procedure which is particularly suited to extremely unstructured and deficient information.
  
  We begin with a brief discussion of the axiomatic distinction between probability and the info-gap perception of uncertainty.
  
  We then formulate the basic decision functions of info-gap decision theory:
  
  (i) Robustness function: protection against adverse uncertainty.
  (ii) Opportunity function: exploitation of propitious uncertainty.
  
  We consider simple examples from engineering design, economics, and management.

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