Kybernetes

Lars Skyttner

1999 Kybernetes

doi: 10.1108/03684929910258789

To make decisions has long been considered an art more than a science. Today the area has been formalized under the name of praxeology and includes the use of computers as decision aids. In this paper some basic decision models are analysed together with some psychological phenomena often connected to them. Managerial problems and needs are examined and related to available computer decision support. The military command, control, communication, and intelligence structure is presented and compared to the corresponding civilian framework. The conclusion was that computer support in decision making now is firmly established among middle level decision makers. Top level managers, on the other hand, were found to derive no major benefit from such systems. Here good intuition, good guesses and a certain feeling for the task were the most important tools.

Gaspar Mora; Yves Cherruault

1999 Kybernetes

doi: 10.1108/03684929910258798

Most of the known optimization methods for a given continuous function f defined on a compact set H = न i=1,..,n (a i ,b i ) require strong conditions on f. In the early 1980s, Cherruault proposed a method, called ALIENOR which was able to reduce the multidimensional optimization problem to another one‐dimensional optimization: the optimization of the restriction f h * of f to some adequate ॅ‐dense curve h into the domain H. The characterization, the generation of such curves as well as the theoretic calculation times associated with them, have been studied previously by the authors. Their consequences and the general problem concerning the error in the approximation to global minimum of f and the minimization of the error itself, that such reduction produces, will be the subject of this paper.

Janusz Brozyna

1999 Kybernetes

doi: 10.1108/03684929910258806

Vytvorology, which is an exact science of human processes, offers new, acute and reliable research possibilities in this field of human and social processes. Describes briefly how the difficulties, that have made the creation of a modern theory of society and civilization impossible for decades, are now overcome. Furthermore, the paper characterizes the fundamental elements of this new analysis method applied to the human individual and to the social examination of processes; it also presents some important results for the practice of politics. Hence, it gives a vision of human and social processes that is a coherent whole with the description of the material Universe made by physics. This method permits not only the development of the general civilization theory and the analysis of the material aspect of our life, but also the spiritual aspect of human beings, setting a very thorough and coherent image of human presence on Earth in unity with the Universe.

Edward T. Lee; Madonna E. Lee

1999 Kybernetes

doi: 10.1108/03684929910258815

An improvement transformation is a transformation which has the following two properties, namely, (1) after applying it, all the already achieved subgoals are still being accomplished and (2) additional new subgoals or partial new subgoals may be accomplished. By using improvement transformations, an intelligent problem‐solving method is presented with illustrative examples. This method consists of three parts: (1) goal decomposition and subgoal ordering; (2) successive improvement transformations; and (3) backtrack algorithms. The intelligent problem‐solving method using successive improvement transformations may have useful applications in goal decomposition, goal regression, genetic algorithms, robotics, and future expert system design.

Artemis Papakyriazis; Panagiotis Papakyriazis

1999 Kybernetes

doi: 10.1108/03684929910258833

The interplay between prediction and estimation is crucial in adaptive prediction problems. In its general form, the adaptive prediction problem is a difficult multiperiod optimization problem and thus too complex for practical applications. By minimizing the one‐step‐ahead forecasting error, subject to a constraint on the (weighted) trace of the inverse on the one‐step‐ahead information matrix we arrive at a very simple approach, which should be interesting for more complex situations also. In the context suggesting the problem, a pollution dispersion model with time‐varying parameters is considered, and the target is to obtain a sensible and easily implementable adaptive predictor.