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Applying learning algorithms to preference elicitation

Published: 17 May 2004 Publication History

Abstract

We consider the parallels between the preference elicitation problem in combinatorial auctions and the problem of learning an unknown function from learning theory. We show that learning algorithms can be used as a basis for preference elicitation algorithms. The resulting elicitation algorithms perform a polynomial number of queries. We also give conditions under which the resulting algorithms have polynomial communication. Our conversion procedure allows us to generate combinatorial auction protocols from learning algorithms for polynomials, monotone DNF, and linear-threshold functions. In particular, we obtain an algorithm that elicits XOR bids with polynomial communication.

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cover image ACM Conferences
EC '04: Proceedings of the 5th ACM conference on Electronic commerce
May 2004
278 pages
ISBN:1581137710
DOI:10.1145/988772
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 17 May 2004

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  1. combinatorial auctions
  2. learning
  3. preference elicitation

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EC '04 Paper Acceptance Rate 24 of 146 submissions, 16%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 664 of 2,389 submissions, 28%

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