The value of information in shortest path optimization/

Information about a random event (termed the source) is typically treated as a (possibly noisy) function of that event. Information has a destination, an agent, that uses the information to make a decision. In traditional communication systems design, it is usually assumed that the agent uses the information to produce an estimate of the source, and that estimate is in turn used to make the decision. Consequently, the typical objective of communication-systems design is to construct the communication system so that the joint distribution between the source and the information is "optimal" in the sense that it minimizes the average error of the estimate. Due to resource limitations such as cost, power, or time, estimation quality is constrained in the sense that the set of allowable joint distribution is bounded in mutual information. In the context of an agent using information to make decisions, however, such metrics may not be appropriate. In particular, the true value of information is determined by how it impacts the average payoff of the agent's decisions, not its estimation accuracy. To this end, mutual information may not the most convenient measure of information quantity since its relationship to decision quality may be very complicated, making it difficult to develop algorithms for information optimization. In this thesis, we study the value of information in an instance of an uncertain decision framework: shortest path optimization on a graph with random edge weights.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2010

Author dc:creator

• Rinehart, Michael David

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Munther A. Dahleh.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/58452

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/58452