Problem Solving by Heterogeneous Agents

Hong, Lu; Page, Scott E.

doi:10.1006/jeth.2000.2709

Cited by 335 publications

(207 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…Similar arguments explaining the benefits of diversity have also been described in [1,2,3,4,5,7,8,10].…”

Section: Diversity In Workplacesupporting

confidence: 73%

One more mathematical argument in favor of interdisciplinary research and diversity

Kosheleva¹,

Lerma²

2014

imf

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In this paper, we show that mathematical results from the theory of deductive systems, results which have been used to explain the evolutionary advantage of sexual reproduction over asexual one, can be also used to explain potential advantages of interdisciplinary research and of diversity in the workplace. Mathematics Subject Classification: 03B22, 91D99Keywords: deductive systems, speed-up, interdisciplinary research BackgroundA 1987 MIT book [6] by a renowned logician S. Yu. Maslov contains, among other things, a possible mathematical explanation of why sexual reproduction is more efficient than asexual. This explanation is based on the analysis of deductive systems.When the environment changes, the original DNA -which was adequate for survival in the previous environment -is often no longer adequate. In this case, for the species to survive, they need to modify their DNA so as to make it more adequate for the changed environment.

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“…Similar arguments explaining the benefits of diversity have also been described in [1,2,3,4,5,7,8,10].…”

Section: Diversity In Workplacesupporting

confidence: 73%

One more mathematical argument in favor of interdisciplinary research and diversity

Kosheleva¹,

Lerma²

2014

imf

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“…As the group size becomes larger, the group of the best problem solvers becomes more diverse and, not surprisingly, the group performs relatively better. A further implication of our result is that, in a problem-solving context, a person's value depends on her ability to improve the collective decision (8). A person's expected contribution is contextual, depending on the perspectives and heuristics of others who work on the problem.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 73%

Groups of diverse problem solvers can outperform groups of high-ability problem solvers

Hong

Page

2004

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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1,424

1,012

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We introduce a general framework for modeling functionally diverse problem-solving agents. In this framework, problem-solving agents possess representations of problems and algorithms that they use to locate solutions. We use this framework to establish a result relevant to group composition. We find that when selecting a problem-solving team from a diverse population of intelligent agents, a team of randomly selected agents outperforms a team comprised of the best-performing agents. This result relies on the intuition that, as the initial pool of problem solvers becomes large, the best-performing agents necessarily become similar in the space of problem solvers. Their relatively greater ability is more than offset by their lack of problem-solving diversity.A diverse society creates problems and opportunities. In the past, much of the public interest in diversity has focused on issues of fairness and representation. More recently, however, there has been a rising interest in the benefits of diversity. In the legal cases surrounding the University of Michigan's admissions policies and in efforts to curtail affirmative action in California, Texas, and elsewhere, there have been claims that diverse perspectives improve collective understanding and collective problem solving. Coincident with this political and legal wrangling has been an effort on the part of scholars to identify how to exploit this diversity both in solving hard computational problems (1, 2) and in human organizations (3).In the common understanding, diversity in a group of people refers to differences in their demographic characteristics, cultural identities and ethnicity, and training and expertise. Advocates of diversity in problem-solving groups claim a linkage among these sorts of diversity (which we will refer to as identity diversity) and what we might call functional diversity, differences in how people represent problems and how they go about solving them. Given that linkage, they conclude that, because of their greater functional diversity, identity-diverse groups can outperform homogeneous groups (4-6).Building on earlier ideas from the psychology and artificial intelligence literatures (7), we describe a mathematical framework for modeling problem solvers that captures the functional diversity that cognitive psychologists and organizational theorists claim is correlated with identity diversity. In our framework, agents possess internal representations of problems, which we call perspectives, and algorithms that they use to locate solutions, which we call heuristics. Together, a perspective-heuristic pair creates a mapping from the space of possible solutions to itself. A diverse group is one whose agents' mappings are diverse. Our perspective-heuristic framework is not minimal, because we show in an earlier paper (8) that two problem solvers with distinct perspectives and heuristics can act identically in the space of solutions. However, the advantage of the full framework is that it generalizes models in the computer science literature...

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“…The formal logic behind this idea was recently discovered by economists Hong and Page (2001) and Page (2007), who also demonstrated how it operates or fails to operate in different situations. This phenomenon is foundational to the wisdom of crowds and the whole Hayekian view of the use of knowledge in society.…”

Section: Knowledge As An Input and Output Of Creative Activitiesmentioning

confidence: 98%

Economic Analysis of Knowledge: The History of Thought and the Central Themes

Leppälä

2012

SSRN Journal

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Problem Solving by Heterogeneous Agents

Cited by 335 publications

References 22 publications

One more mathematical argument in favor of interdisciplinary research and diversity

One more mathematical argument in favor of interdisciplinary research and diversity

Groups of diverse problem solvers can outperform groups of high-ability problem solvers

Economic Analysis of Knowledge: The History of Thought and the Central Themes

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