An eye-opener: more than Monte Carlo!

In the real world, day in and day out, we analyze risk to make more informed, lucrative decisions. One major limitation of Excel is its inability to easily generate alternative outcomes, which can be used to quantify your probability of success and to mitigate your risks. Excel alone cannot help you to understand how variable or uncertain inputs will affect your forecasts. Tools like Crystal Ball that use Monte Carlo analysis as its basis, are used to create thousands of possible alternative outcomes for the underlying model in such uncertain situations. For example, if you are simulating a reservoir in the oil and energy industry, it is possible to generate 5000 scenarios that represent 5000 separate solutions. By analyzing the statistics of the simulation, it is possible to quantity potential oil reserves.

A better analysis means a better-informed decision.

So...what's the probability that you can benefit from Crystal Ball's simulation and analysis?

source:http://www.decisioneering.com/oilandgas/index.html

Maximizing score to make sense!

Determining the Best Combination of Word Senses

The early versions of the uK analyzer at this point simply tried all of the possible combinations of word senses. Each combination activates the applicable constraints, which are combined into a total score for the combination. The combination with the best total score is chosen as the basic Semantic Dependency Analysis, the core TMRs to which other microtheories (such as aspect and coreference) can be applied. In the example sentence, the following choices were made:

1. ``a-traves-de'' is INSTRUMENT, since its LOCATION meaning would require ``adquirir'' to be a PHYSICAL-OBJECT.
2. ``en'' is LOCATION, since its TEMPORAL meaning requires ``espana'' to be a TEMPORAL-OBJECT.
3. ``adquirir'' maps into ACQUIRE, since its LEARN sense requires ``Dr-Andrew'' to be INFORMATION.
4. ``Dr-Andrew'' is an ORGANIZATION, since its HUMAN meaning cannot be the THEME of an ACQUIRE concept.
5. uK currently has trouble choosing between the CORPORATION and SOCIAL-EVENT meaning of ``compania,'' the object of the ``a-traves-de'' PP. Both can have locations in Spain, and both can be INSTRUMENTS of EVENTs. At this point, uK needs to add information into the ontology that ORGANIZATIONS can typically fill the INSTRUMENT slot of ACQUIRE acts, but SOCIAL-EVENTS cannot. Statistical information could also be consulted to tell us that in this business context the CORPORATION meaning is more likely.

source: New Mexico State University Research project