Dark Experience for General Continual Learning: a Strong, Simple Baseline
Pietro Buzzega, Matteo Boschini, A. Porrello
et al.
Neural networks struggle to learn continuously, as they forget the old knowledge catastrophically whenever the data distribution changes over time. Recently, Continual Learning has inspired a plethora of approaches and evaluation settings; however, the majority of them overlooks the properties of a practical scenario, where the data stream cannot be shaped as a sequence of tasks and offline training is not viable. We work towards General Continual Learning (GCL), where task boundaries blur and the domain and class distributions shift either gradually or suddenly. We address it through Dark Experience Replay, namely matching the network's logits sampled throughout the optimization trajectory, thus promoting consistency with its past. By conducting an extensive analysis on top of standard benchmarks, we show that such a seemingly simple baseline outperforms consolidated approaches and leverages limited resources. To provide a better understanding, we further introduce MNIST-360, a novel GCL evaluation setting.
1232 sitasi
en
Computer Science, Psychology
C-Pack: Packed Resources For General Chinese Embeddings
Shitao Xiao, Zheng Liu, Peitian Zhang
et al.
We introduce C-Pack, a package of resources that significantly advances the field of general text embeddings for Chinese. C-Pack includes three critical resources. 1) C-MTP is a massive training dataset for text embedding, which is based on the curation of vast unlabeled corpora and the integration of high-quality labeled corpora. 2) C-MTEB is a comprehensive benchmark for Chinese text embeddings covering 6 tasks and 35 datasets. 3) BGE is a family of embedding models covering multiple sizes. Our models outperform all prior Chinese text embeddings on C-MTEB by more than +10% upon the time of the release. We also integrate and optimize the entire suite of training methods for BGE. Along with our resources on general Chinese embedding, we release our data and models for English text embeddings. The English models also achieve state-of-the-art performance on the MTEB benchmark; meanwhile, our released English data is 2 times larger than the Chinese data. Both Chinese and English datasets are the largest public release of training data for text embeddings. All these resources are made publicly available at https://github.com/FlagOpen/FlagEmbedding.
486 sitasi
en
Computer Science
PCPAm - A dataset of histopathological images of penile cancer for classification tasksZenodo
Marcos Gabriel Mendes Lauande, Geraldo Braz Júnior, João Dallyson Sousa de Almeida
et al.
Penile cancer has an incidence strongly linked to sociocultural factors, being more common in underdeveloped countries like Brazil, where it represents approximately 2% of cancers affecting men. This dataset was created to address the scarcity of publicly available resources for classifying histopathological images in penile cancer research. The images were collected in 2021 from tissue samples obtained through biopsies of patients undergoing treatment for penile cancer. After staining with Hematoxylin and Eosin (H&E), the tissue samples were photographed using a Leica ICC50 HD camera attached to a bright-field microscope (Leica DM500). The dataset comprises 194 high-resolution images (2048 × 1536 pixels), categorized by magnification (40X and 100X) and pathological classification (Tumor or Non-Tumor). Metadata includes additional information such as histological grade and, for some images, HPV status. Although previous works have focused primarily on binary classification tasks, the dataset includes additional labels, such as histological grade and HPV (Human Papilloma Virus) presence, which provide opportunities for multi-label classification or other types of predictive modelling. These extended labels enhance the dataset’s versatility for more complex tasks in medical image analysis. The dataset holds significant reuse potential for machine learning tasks beyond binary classification, allowing researchers to explore additional layers of analysis, such as HPV detection and histological grading. It can also be used for model benchmarking and comparative studies in cancer research, contributing to developing new diagnostic tools. The dataset and metadata are available for further research and model development.
Computer applications to medicine. Medical informatics, Science (General)
Expert projections on the development and application of bioenergy with carbon capture and storage technologies
Tobias Heimann, Lara-Sophie Wähling, Tomke Honkomp
et al.
Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) is a crucial element in most modelling studies on emission pathways of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to limit global warming. BECCS can substitute fossil fuels in energy production and reduce CO _2 emissions, while using biomass for energy production can have feedback effects on land use, agricultural and forest products markets, as well as biodiversity and water resources. To assess the former pros and cons of BECCS deployment, interdisciplinary model approaches require detailed estimates of technological information related to BECCS production technologies. Current estimates of the cost structure and capture potential of BECCS vary widely due to the absence of large-scale production. To obtain more precise estimates, a global online expert survey ( N = 32) was conducted including questions on the regional development potential and biomass use of BECCS, as well as the future operating costs, capture potential, and scalability in different application sectors. In general, the experts consider the implementation of BECCS in Europe and North America to be very promising and regard BECCS application in the liquid biofuel industry and thermal power generation as very likely. The results show significant differences depending on whether the experts work in the Global North or the Global South. Thus, the findings underline the importance of including experts from the Global South in discussions on carbon dioxide removal methods. Regarding technical estimates, the operating costs of BECCS in thermal power generation were estimated in the range of 100–200 USD/tCO _2 , while the CO _2 capture potential was estimated to be 50–200 MtCO _2 yr ^−1 by 2030, with cost-efficiency gains of 20% by 2050 due to technological progress. Whereas the individuals’ experts provided more precise estimates, the overall distribution of estimates reflected the wide range of estimates found in the literature. For the cost shares within BECCS, it was difficult to obtain consistent estimates. However, due to very few current alternative estimates, the results are an important step for modelling the production sector of BECCS in interdisciplinary models that analyse cross-dimensional trade-offs and long-term sustainability.
Environmental technology. Sanitary engineering, Environmental sciences
Challenges and Strategies in Healthcare Workforce Management: A Scoping Review
Ali Mohammad Mossadeghrad, Shervin Mossavarali, Seyed Hamid Hosseini Neishabouri
et al.
Objective: Employees’ management is the process of planning, organizing, directing, and controlling human resources within an organization, which is of great importance and it is necessary to pay attention to its various dimensions, including the provision, distribution, and retention of employees. In the present study, the challenges and problems in the field of personnel are examined and then solutions to reduce these challenges are discussed.
Information sources and selected methods for study: A scoping review was conducted in August 2023 to identify the challenges faced by healthcare workers and suggest appropriate solutions. The search was performed across English-language databases, including PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, as well as Persian-language databases SID and Magiran, and search engines Google Scholar and Google. Title and abstract screening were independently carried out by three authors. After the screening and full-text review, data extraction was performed on 104 relevant studies. Data analysis was conducted using the Ritchie and Spencer framework analysis method.
Results: A total of 27 challenges related to the healthcare workforce were identified and categorized into three domains: recruitment, distribution, and retention. The most critical challenges included unequal distribution of physicians, workforce shortages, job burnout, and migration of healthcare workers, all of which significantly impact the quality of healthcare services. Regarding workforce recruitment, key strategies included utilizing trainees, training non-specialist staff, and expanding educational capacities. To address distribution disparities, policies such as strengthening family physician programs, telemedicine, and offering financial incentives were proposed. In terms of workforce retention, effective solutions included welfare support, psychological counseling, stress management programs, and work-life balance initiatives.
Conclusion: To improve the condition of health workers, policymakers must adopt an integrated, evidence-based approach addressing the three areas of recruitment, distribution, and retention. Moreover, proposed strategies should be contextualized based on each country's economic, social, and cultural conditions and implemented through intersectoral collaboration and sufficient resource allocation to ensure long-term effectiveness.
Reference vegetation for restoration? Three vegetation maps compared across 76 nature reserves in Uganda and Kenya
Jens‐Peter Barnekow Lillesø, Davide Barsotti, James Kalema
et al.
Abstract Forest and landscape restoration are increasingly popular nature‐based solutions to mitigate climate change and safeguard biodiversity. Restoration planning and monitoring implies that a reference ecosystem has been defined to which the restored site can be compared, but how to best select such reference? We tested three different potential natural vegetation (PNV) maps of the same areas in Kenya and Uganda for their utility as ecological references with independent data that were not used when those maps were made. These independent datasets included presence observations of woody species from 76 sites in forest reserves in Kenya and Uganda, and classification of surveyed species into a system that included “forest‐only” and “nonforest‐only” ecological types. Our tests show that (1) the three vegetation maps largely agree on the environmental envelopes/ranges within which forests occur. (2) There are large differences in how well the maps predict the presence of forest‐only species. (3) Two maps, based on empirical observations (V4A and White), predict forest types well, whereas the third, based on climate envelopes only (NS), performs poorly. (4) A large area in Uganda is potentially in one of two alternative stable states. We conclude that it is possible to evaluate the utility of PNV maps at a more detailed scale than the level of biome and ecoregion. This indicates that it is possible to map PNV at scales required for reference for restoration and management of forest vegetation. We recommend that empirically based maps of potential natural vegetation are used in restoration planning (biome and PNV maps based on climate envelopes alone may be unreliable tools) as a baseline model for predicting the distribution of reference ecosystems under current and future conditions. It could conveniently be done by deconstructing the existing biome maps, supported by rapid botanical surveys.
Enhancing Modern Supervised Word Sense Disambiguation Models by Semantic Lexical Resources
Stefano Melacci, Achille Globo, Leonardo Rigutini
Supervised models for Word Sense Disambiguation (WSD) currently yield to state-of-the-art results in the most popular benchmarks. Despite the recent introduction of Word Embeddings and Recurrent Neural Networks to design powerful context-related features, the interest in improving WSD models using Semantic Lexical Resources (SLRs) is mostly restricted to knowledge-based approaches. In this paper, we enhance "modern" supervised WSD models exploiting two popular SLRs: WordNet and WordNet Domains. We propose an effective way to introduce semantic features into the classifiers, and we consider using the SLR structure to augment the training data. We study the effect of different types of semantic features, investigating their interaction with local contexts encoded by means of mixtures of Word Embeddings or Recurrent Neural Networks, and we extend the proposed model into a novel multi-layer architecture for WSD. A detailed experimental comparison in the recent Unified Evaluation Framework (Raganato et al., 2017) shows that the proposed approach leads to supervised models that compare favourably with the state-of-the art.
Almost invisible: A review of inclusion of LGBTQI people with cancer in online patient information resources.
J. Ussher, S. Ryan, Rosalie Power
et al.
OBJECTIVE This review assessed the inclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer and/or intersex (LGBTQI) people in online cancer information. METHODS The websites of Australian cancer organizations were reviewed to identify if they included LGBTQI people and the extent and nature of this inclusion. Websites that did not include LGBTQI people were then reviewed to identify if information was implicitly LGBTQI inclusive. International LGBTQI cancer information resources were reviewed to identify key content. RESULTS Of sixty-one Australian cancer organization websites reviewed, eight (13%) mentioned LGBTQI people, including 13 information resources targeted to LGBTQI people and 19 general cancer information resources that mentioned LGBTQI people. For Australian cancer websites that did not mention LGBTQI people, 88% used gender neutral language to refer to partners, 69% included a range of sexual behaviours, 13% used gender neutral language when referring to hormones or reproductive anatomy but none acknowledged diverse relationship types. Internationally, 38 LGBTQI-specific cancer information resources were identified. CONCLUSIONS Cancer patient information resources need to be LGBTQI inclusive. LGBTQI-targeted resources are required to address this population's unique needs and improve cultural safety and cancer outcomes. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS Recommendations are provided for LGBTQI inclusive cancer patient information resources.
Social Network Analysis of Editorial Board Interlocking Phenomena from the Perspective of Astronomy and Astrophysics Journals
Farshid Danesh, Samaneh Kesht Karan, Lili Banihashemi
et al.
Editorial board members (EBMs) of journals play a pivotal role in authentic international scientific journals. Editorial Board Interlocking (EBI) phenomenon reflects the effectiveness and importance of the scholarly journal's editorial boards in various scientific fields. The primary purpose of this paper is to conduct a Social Network Analysis (SNA) of EBI phenomena from the perspective of astronomy and astrophysics journals. The present study is applied research based on EBI, SNA, and the descriptive-analytical approach. The statistical population of this study consists of the editorial board members of all journals of astronomy and astrophysics indexed in the JCR and official journal websites. There are 1597 job positions in 67 astronomy and astrophysics journals occupied by the 1394 scholars. Data analysis shows EBI for 95 scholars and 79 organizations. "Aleksei A. Starobinsky" from Russia and the Russian Academy of Sciences, "Daniel J. Scheeres" from the United States, and the University of Colorado Boulder have the highest EBI contributions in five journals. "Daniel J. Scheeres," with a centrality of 39, has the highest degree of centrality measurement among the EBMs. The presence of more than five times as many men as women indicates that astronomy and astrophysics journals are considered "masculine" by the editorial board. The EBI phenomenon is observed in astronomy and astrophysics journals due to the limited number of peop le eligible for the editorial board. Due to EBI, a limited number of famous scholars are made macro-policies such as publishing the articles, referees selections, and the reviewing process. Astronomy and astrophysics journals have "elite" academic networks. Gender inequality exists among EBMs, and the majority of them are male. Accordingly, these journals are "men's journals."
Information resources (General), Transportation and communications
Between-item similarity frees up working memory resources through compression: A domain-general property.
Benjamin Kowialiewski, Benoît Lemaire, Sophie Portrat
Compression, the ability to recode information in a denser format, is a core property of working memory (WM). Previous studies have shown that the ability to compress information largely benefits WM performance. Importantly, recent evidence also suggests compression as freeing up WM resources, thus enhancing recall performance for other, less compressible information. Contrary to the traditional view positing that between-item similarity decreases WM performance, this study shows that between-item similarity can be used to free up WM resources through compression. Across a series of four experiments, we show that between-item similarity not only enhances recall performance for similar items themselves, but also for other, less compressible items within the same list, and this in the semantic (Experiment 1), phonological (Experiment 2), visuospatial (Experiment 3), and visual (Experiment 4) domains. Across these different domains, a consistent pattern of results emerged: between-item similarity proactively-but not retroactively-enhanced WM performance for other items, and this as compared with a condition in which between-item similarity at the whole-list level was minimized. We propose that between-item similarity in any domain may impact WM using the same underlying machinery: via a compression mechanism, which allows an efficient reallocation of WM resources. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
Fisher Information Universally Identifies Quantum Resources.
K. C. Tan, Varun Narasimhachar, Bartosz Regula
We show that both the classical as well as the quantum definitions of the Fisher information faithfully identify resourceful quantum states in general quantum resource theories, in the sense that they can always distinguish between states with and without a given resource. This shows that all quantum resources confer an advantage in metrology, and establishes the Fisher information as a universal tool to probe the resourcefulness of quantum states. We provide bounds on the extent of this advantage, as well as a simple criterion to test whether different resources are useful for the estimation of unitarily encoded parameters. Finally, we extend the results to show that the Fisher information is also able to identify the dynamical resourcefulness of quantum operations.
37 sitasi
en
Medicine, Physics
Assessing the impact of forest structure disturbances on the arboreal movement and energetics of orangutans—An agent-based modeling approach
Kirana Widyastuti, Kirana Widyastuti, Romain Reuillon
et al.
Agent-based models have been developed and widely employed to assess the impact of disturbances or conservation management on animal habitat use, population development, and viability. However, the direct impacts of canopy disturbance on the arboreal movement of individual primates have been less studied. Such impacts could shed light on the cascading effects of disturbances on animal health and fitness. Orangutans are an arboreal primate that commonly encounters habitat quality deterioration due to land-use changes and related disturbances such as forest fires. Forest disturbance may, therefore, create a complex stress scenario threatening orangutan populations. Due to forest disturbances, orangutans may adapt to employ more terrestrial, as opposed to arboreal, movements potentially prolonging the search for fruiting and nesting trees. In turn, this may lead to changes in daily activity patterns (i.e., time spent traveling, feeding, and resting) and available energy budget, potentially decreasing the orangutan's fitness. We developed the agent-based simulation model BORNEO (arBOReal aNimal movEment mOdel), which explicitly describes both orangutans' arboreal and terrestrial movement in a forest habitat, depending on distances between trees and canopy structures. Orangutans in the model perform activities with a motivation to balance energy intake and expenditure through locomotion. We tested the model using forest inventory data obtained in Sebangau National Park, Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. This allowed us to construct virtual forests with real characteristics including tree connectivity, thus creating the potential to expand the environmental settings for simulation experiments. In order to parameterize the energy related processes of the orangutans described in the model, we applied a computationally intensive evolutionary algorithm and evaluated the simulation results against observed behavioral patterns of orangutans. Both the simulated variability and proportion of activity budgets including feeding, resting, and traveling time for female and male orangutans confirmed the suitability of the model for its purpose. We used the calibrated model to compare the activity patterns and energy budgets of orangutans in both natural and disturbed forests . The results confirm field observations that orangutans in the disturbed forest are more likely to experience deficit energy balance due to traveling to the detriment of feeding time. Such imbalance is more pronounced in males than in females. The finding of a threshold of forest disturbances that affects a significant change in activity and energy budgets suggests potential threats to the orangutan population. Our study introduces the first agent-based model describing the arboreal movement of primates that can serve as a tool to investigate the direct impact of forest changes and disturbances on the behavior of species such as orangutans. Moreover, it demonstrates the suitability of high-performance computing to optimize the calibration of complex agent-based models describing animal behavior at a fine spatio-temporal scale (1-m and 1-s granularity).
The Network Capital of the Cossack Youth as an Element of the Social Capital of the Russian Cossacks
A. S. Shilyaeva, S. V. Kurapov, M. E. Zabolotnikov
et al.
Introduction. The article considers the modern Russian Cossacks as a complex social object in the trinity of interpersonal, intragroup and intrapersonal communications. The ethno markers of the Cossacks that influence the perception of “friend or foe” are determined; the problem of the concept of the network capital of the Cossacks is formulated.Methodology and sources. The section formulates the construction of network capital from the point of view of structuring social relations in the network approach, and from the point of view of the culture of interactive communication in the network space. The main approaches to the definition and measurement of network capital are shown, its specificity for the social group of Cossack youth is revealed. The network model of the Cossacks and Cossack youth is described as a whole and its part. The role of state-forming values in the Cossack environment is shown. The largest network Cossack youth organizations from different regions of Russia are presented.Results and discussion. The article describes the methodology for researching network capital, organized at the All-Russian Gathering of Cossack Youth in the fall of 2021 in the city of Krasnoyarsk. On the basis of four groups of values of the Cossack youth, namely social, personal, values of the Cossacks and values of the direct contact environment, a network analysis of positive and negative relationships, as well as relationships in subgroups of values, is carried out. As a comparative analysis, the results of measuring the network capital of students of the IT faculty of the evening department are used, which show a clear professional orientation and belonging to a generalized supranational community of IT specialists and a low team-building potential. The authors conclude that the construction of “network capital” is more often used in an empirical sense to obtain information about the mechanisms of access to resources or some kind of influence through network relations.Conclusion. In general, the theory of “network capital” is in the process of its formation and requires further scientific understanding. In the ongoing process of institutionalization of the Cossacks, contradictions often arise between the traditions and values of modern society, which the Cossack youth seeks to resolve in a compromise way. It is concluded that the network capital of the Cossack youth is in the stage of its active accumulation and continuous transformations.
Philosophy (General), Sociology (General)
Information-Theoretic Foundations of DNA Data Storage
Ilan Shomorony, Reinhard Heckel
Due to its longevity and enormous information density, DNA is an attractive medium for archival data storage. Thanks to rapid technological advances, DNA storage is becoming practically feasible, as demonstrated by a number of experimental storage systems, making it a promising solution for our society's increasing need of data storage. While in living things, DNA molecules can consist of millions of nucleotides, due to technological constraints, in practice, data is stored on many short DNA molecules, which are preserved in a DNA pool and cannot be spatially ordered. Moreover, imperfections in sequencing, synthesis, and handling, as well as DNA decay during storage, introduce random noise into the system, making the task of reliably storing and retrieving information in DNA challenging. This unique setup raises a natural information-theoretic question: how much information can be reliably stored on and reconstructed from millions of short noisy sequences? The goal of this monograph is to address this question by discussing the fundamental limits of storing information on DNA. Motivated by current technological constraints on DNA synthesis and sequencing, we propose a probabilistic channel model that captures three key distinctive aspects of the DNA storage systems: (1) the data is written onto many short DNA molecules that are stored in an unordered fashion; (2) the molecules are corrupted by noise and (3) the data is read by randomly sampling from the DNA pool. Our goal is to investigate the impact of each of these key aspects on the capacity of the DNA storage system. Rather than focusing on coding-theoretic considerations and computationally efficient encoding and decoding, we aim to build an information-theoretic foundation for the analysis of these channels, developing tools for achievability and converse arguments.
Resources for Turkish Natural Language Processing: A critical survey
Çağrı Çöltekin, A. Seza Doğruöz, Özlem Çetinoğlu
This paper presents a comprehensive survey of corpora and lexical resources available for Turkish. We review a broad range of resources, focusing on the ones that are publicly available. In addition to providing information about the available linguistic resources, we present a set of recommendations, and identify gaps in the data available for conducting research and building applications in Turkish Linguistics and Natural Language Processing.
Information measures and geometry of the hyperbolic exponential families of Poincaré and hyperboloid distributions
Frank Nielsen, Kazuki Okamura
We study various information-theoretic measures and the information geometry of the Poincaré distributions and the related hyperboloid distributions, and prove that their statistical mixture models are universal density estimators of smooth densities in hyperbolic spaces. The Poincaré and the hyperboloid distributions are two types of hyperbolic probability distributions defined using different models of hyperbolic geometry. Namely, the Poincaré distributions form a triparametric bivariate exponential family whose sample space is the hyperbolic Poincaré upper-half plane and natural parameter space is the open 3D convex cone of two-by-two positive-definite matrices. The family of hyperboloid distributions form another exponential family which has sample space the forward sheet of the two-sheeted unit hyperboloid modeling hyperbolic geometry. In the first part, we prove that all $f$-divergences between Poincaré distributions can be expressed using three canonical terms using Eaton's framework of maximal group invariance. We also show that the $f$-divergences between any two Poincaré distributions are asymmetric except when those distributions belong to a same leaf of a particular foliation of the parameter space. We report closed-form formula for the Fisher information matrix, the Shannon's differential entropy and the Kullback-Leibler divergence. and Bhattacharyya distances between such distributions using the framework of exponential families. In the second part, we state the corresponding results for the exponential family of hyperboloid distributions by highlighting a parameter correspondence between the Poincaré and the hyperboloid distributions. Finally, we describe a random generator to draw variates and present two Monte Carlo methods to stochastically estimate numerically $f$-divergences between hyperbolic distributions.
Let Students Choose: Examining the Impact of Open Educational Resources on Performance in General Chemistry
Rebecca L. Sansom, Virginia Clinton-Lisell, Lane Fischer
General chemistry is a gateway course for most STEM majors, so student success is a priority for chemistry faculty. Providing quality information resources for students, including textbooks, is one...
16 sitasi
en
Computer Science
Investigating elementary school students' text-based argumentation with multiple online information resources
Carita Kiili, Ivar Bråten, Nina Kullberg
et al.
Abstract In this study, we explored how elementary school students used multiple information resources in responding to a text-based argumentation task asking them to research a set of online texts in order to state and justify their stance on a controversial health-related issue. Results showed that most students took a stance that was consistent with the majority of the information resources that they read, that they mainly drew on more reliable resources in their written task products, and that they justified their stance by providing one or more supporting reasons. Students relied much more on copying and paraphrasing content from the online resources than on integrating information within and across the resources, however, and they very rarely referred to the sources in their written products. In general, girls were found to outperform boys on measures of content, argumentation, and integration in the written task products, and these aspects of the written products were also positively related to students’ basic reading and reasoning skills. The discussion highlights the challenges many elementary school students experience in this complex literacy task context, suggests some avenues for future research, and discusses instructional implications of the study.
42 sitasi
en
Computer Science, Psychology
Accessibility Assessment of Buildings Based on Multi-Source Spatial Data: Taking Wuhan as a Case Study
Xue Yang, Yanjia Cao, Anqi Wu
et al.
The question of whether each building of housing estate has equal access to nearby social service resources (e.g., public transportation service, catering, entertainment, etc.) is a major concern of citizens. This paper takes Wuhan as a case to explore the equality in social service resource sharing of the housing estate at a microscopic level by analyzing the accessibility of each building under different travel patterns. To estimate the accessibility of each building, we developed a novel model with multi-travel modes and residential suitability evaluation of residents. The specific values of the parameters involved in the proposed model were extracted from the multi-source spatial data such as social media data, census data, point of interest, and road network data. These data were acquired from multiple platforms, e.g., Gaode map, OSM (OpenStreetMap), and GeoQ. We chose three types of districts in the city of Wuhan, including the old central district, new central district, and suburban district. We applied the proposed model to assess the accessibility of communities in these districts. Based on the results, we further analyzed whether and to what extent the distribution of each building in urban communities is equitable for social service resource sharing in China.
FAIR: Fairness-Aware Information Retrieval Evaluation
Ruoyuan Gao, Yingqiang Ge, Chirag Shah
With the emerging needs of creating fairness-aware solutions for search and recommendation systems, a daunting challenge exists of evaluating such solutions. While many of the traditional information retrieval (IR) metrics can capture the relevance, diversity, and novelty for the utility with respect to users, they are not suitable for inferring whether the presented results are fair from the perspective of responsible information exposure. On the other hand, existing fairness metrics do not account for user utility or do not measure it adequately. To address this problem, we propose a new metric called FAIR. By unifying standard IR metrics and fairness measures into an integrated metric, this metric offers a new perspective for evaluating fairness-aware ranking results. Based on this metric, we developed an effective ranking algorithm that jointly optimized user utility and fairness. The experimental results showed that our FAIR metric could highlight results with good user utility and fair information exposure. We showed how FAIR related to a set of existing utility and fairness metrics and demonstrated the effectiveness of our FAIR-based algorithm. We believe our work opens up a new direction of pursuing a metric for evaluating and implementing the FAIR systems.