When Data Challenges Theory


Book Description

This volume offers a critical appraisal of the tension between theory and empirical evidence in research on information structure. The relevance of ‘unexpected’ data taken into account in the last decades, such as the well-known case of non-focalizing cleft sentences in Germanic and Romance, has increasingly led us to give more weight to explanations involving inferential reasoning, discourse organization and speakers’ rhetorical strategies, thus moving away from ‘sentence-based’ perspectives. At the same time, this shift towards pragmatic complexity has introduced new challenges to well-established information-structural categories, such as Focus and Topic, to the point that some scholars nowadays even doubt about their descriptive and theoretical usefulness. This book brings together researchers working in different frameworks and delving into cross-linguistic as well as language-internal variation and language contact. Despite their differences, all contributions are committed to the same underlying goal: appreciating the relation between linguistic structures and their context based on a firm empirical grounding and on theoretical models that are able to account for the challenges and richness of language use.




When Data Challenges Theory


Book Description

This volume offers a critical appraisal of the tension between theory and empirical evidence in research on information structure. The main aim of the book is to assess the impact of data that seem to run against commonly accepted tenets in this field.




Trends of Data Science and Applications


Book Description

This book includes an extended version of selected papers presented at the 11th Industry Symposium 2021 held during January 7–10, 2021. The book covers contributions ranging from theoretical and foundation research, platforms, methods, applications, and tools in all areas. It provides theory and practices in the area of data science, which add a social, geographical, and temporal dimension to data science research. It also includes application-oriented papers that prepare and use data in discovery research. This book contains chapters from academia as well as practitioners on big data technologies, artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning, data representation and visualization, business analytics, healthcare analytics, bioinformatics, etc. This book is helpful for the students, practitioners, researchers as well as industry professional.




Adaptive Resonance Theory in Social Media Data Clustering


Book Description

Social media data contains our communication and online sharing, mirroring our daily life. This book looks at how we can use and what we can discover from such big data: Basic knowledge (data & challenges) on social media analytics Clustering as a fundamental technique for unsupervised knowledge discovery and data mining A class of neural inspired algorithms, based on adaptive resonance theory (ART), tackling challenges in big social media data clustering Step-by-step practices of developing unsupervised machine learning algorithms for real-world applications in social media domain Adaptive Resonance Theory in Social Media Data Clustering stands on the fundamental breakthrough in cognitive and neural theory, i.e. adaptive resonance theory, which simulates how a brain processes information to perform memory, learning, recognition, and prediction. It presents initiatives on the mathematical demonstration of ART’s learning mechanisms in clustering, and illustrates how to extend the base ART model to handle the complexity and characteristics of social media data and perform associative analytical tasks. Both cutting-edge research and real-world practices on machine learning and social media analytics are included in the book and if you wish to learn the answers to the following questions, this book is for you: How to process big streams of multimedia data? How to analyze social networks with heterogeneous data? How to understand a user’s interests by learning from online posts and behaviors? How to create a personalized search engine by automatically indexing and searching multimodal information resources? .




Borrowed Knowledge


Book Description

What happens to scientific knowledge when researchers outside the natural sciences bring elements of the latest trend across disciplinary boundaries for their own purposes? Researchers in fields from anthropology to family therapy and traffic planning employ the concepts, methods, and results of chaos theory to harness the disciplinary prestige of the natural sciences, to motivate methodological change or conceptual reorganization within their home discipline, and to justify public policies and aesthetic judgments. Using the recent explosion in the use (and abuse) of chaos theory, Borrowed Knowledge and the Challenge of Learning across Disciplines examines the relationship between science and other disciplines as well as the place of scientific knowledge within our broader culture. Stephen H. Kellert’s detailed investigation of the myriad uses of chaos theory reveals serious problems that can arise in the interchange between science and other knowledge-making pursuits, as well as opportunities for constructive interchange. By engaging with recent debates about interdisciplinary research, Kellert contributes a theoretical vocabulary and a set of critical frameworks for the rigorous examination of borrowing.




Real-World Applications of Game Theory and Optimization


Book Description

This research topic centers on the practical application of game theory and optimization methods to address complex challenges in real-world contexts. At its core, game theory provides a framework for analyzing strategic interactions among rational decision-makers, while optimization techniques are designed to seek the most favorable outcomes. These tools have proven to be powerful assets across a wide range of domains, from economics and computer science to social sciences and engineering. The following objectives guide this exploration: (i) Understanding Game Theory and Optimization in Real-world Contexts: This objective involves investigating how these mathematical constructs are applied to model and resolve problems across various fields. (ii) Analyzing the Effectiveness of Game Theory and Optimization Techniques: This involves studying real-world case studies and practical applications with the goal of evaluating the performance and efficiency of these methods in practice. (iii) Identifying Potential Areas for Effective Application of Game Theory and Optimization: This objective aims to pinpoint sectors or disciplines that may significantly benefit from the application of these mathematical techniques. The goal of this Research Topic in Frontiers in Physics aims to produce a comprehensive understanding of the real-world applications of game theory and optimization, highlighting their practical impact and potential for future use. It will provide valuable insights for professionals and researchers working in the fields where these techniques can be applied and contribute to the body of knowledge in game theory and optimization. Potential topics include but are not limited to the following: 1. Economics and Business: How are game theory and optimization used to make strategic business decisions and to understand economic phenomena? 2. Computer Science: How do these techniques contribute to areas like network design, machine learning, and algorithm development? 3. Social Sciences: How can game theory and optimization help in understanding social dynamics, designing policies, and resolving conflicts? 4. Engineering and Operations Research: How are these techniques utilized in system design, process optimization, and decision-making?




Sociological Theory for Digital Society


Book Description

The digital revolution has not only transformed multiple aspects of social life – it also shakes sociological theory, transforming the most basic assumptions that have underlain it. In this timely book, Ori Schwarz explores the main challenges digitalization poses to different strands of sociological theory and offers paths to adapt them to new social realities. What would symbolic interactionism look like in a world where interaction no longer takes place within bounded situations and is constantly documented as durable digital objects? How should we understand new digitally mediated forms of human association that bind our actions and lives together but have little in common with old-time 'collectives'; and why are they not simply ‘social networks’? How does social capital transform when it is materialized in a digital form, and how does it remould power structures? What happens to our conceptualization of power when faced with the emergence of new forms of algorithmic power? And what happens when labour departs from work? By posing and answering such fascinating questions, and offering critical tools for both students and scholars of social theory and digital society to engage with them, this thought-provoking book draws the outline of future sociological theory for our digital society.




Discourse Theory in European Politics


Book Description

This volume of essays employs discourse theory to analyze mainstream topics in contemporary European politics. Inspired by developments in post-structuralist, psychoanalytic and post-Marxist theory, each contributor problematizes a central issue in European governance, including European security, Third Way politics, constitutional and administrative reform, new forms of nationalism and populism, the shift from welfare to workfare, environmental politics and local government. Alongside these substantive issues, the book tackles questions raised by the difficulties of applying discourse theory to empirical cases.




Big Data and Information Theory


Book Description

Big Data and Information Theory are a binding force between various areas of knowledge that allow for societal advancement. Rapid development of data analytic and information theory allows companies to store vast amounts of information about production, inventory, service, and consumer activities. More powerful CPUs and cloud computing make it possible to do complex optimization instead of using heuristic algorithms, as well as instant rather than offline decision-making. The era of "big data" challenges includes analysis, capture, curation, search, sharing, storage, transfer, visualization, and privacy violations. Big data calls for better integration of optimization, statistics, and data mining. In response to these challenges this book brings together leading researchers and engineers to exchange and share their experiences and research results about big data and information theory applications in various areas. This book covers a broad range of topics including statistics, data mining, data warehouse implementation, engineering management in large-scale infrastructure systems, data-driven sustainable supply chain network, information technology service offshoring project issues, online rumors governance, preliminary cost estimation, and information system project selection. The chapters in this book were originally published in the journal, International Journal of Management Science and Engineering Management.




Decision Theory and Decision Analysis: Trends and Challenges


Book Description

Decision Theory and Decision Analysis: Trends and Challenges is divided into three parts. The first part, overviews, provides state-of-the-art surveys of various aspects of decision analysis and utility theory. The second part, theory and foundations, includes theoretical contributions on decision-making under uncertainty, partial beliefs and preferences. The third section, applications, reflects the real possibilities of recent theoretical developments such as non-expected utility theories, multicriteria decision techniques, and how these improve our understanding of other areas including artificial intelligence, economics, and environmental studies.