Dear INDUCTIVE e-mail list, More about the PhD project (Australian ARC Linkage) follows.
Please publicise, and please direct any interested and able candidates to me, David Dowe. Project summary, 3-year PhD scholarship, $26,667p.a. + top-up: ---------------- Rating and ranking sports players and teams using Minimum Message Length Rating systems go back at least as far as Harkness (1949) and the better-known Elo (1961) system for rating chess players. More recent attempts have been made to refine these systems in a variety of ways. We refine the systems further using the Bayesian information-theoretic Minimum Message Length (MML) principle from statistics, machine learning, econometrics, inductive inference and ``data mining'' (Wallace and Boulton, Computer J, 1968) (Dowe, Handbook of Philos of Statistics, 2011). This includes dealing with the challenging Neyman-Scott-like situation where, for some players and teams, there are few games per player or few games between different groups of players. Our enhanced modelling will be for a range of games and sports - including advantages such as, e.g., first move (as in chess), home ground and location, surface (as in tennis), etc. We will apply this to rating and ranking individuals and teams. We also refine how quickly ratings can change depending upon the strength of the player. Pay: 3-year PhD scholarship, Aus$26,667p.a. + scholarship top-up Some background on Chris Wallace (1933-2004), MML and David Dowe: Chris Wallace published the first paper on Minimum Message Length (MML) in Wallace & Boulton (1968). In Chris Wallace (1933-2004)'s posthumous ``Statistical and Inductive Inference by Minimum Message Length'' (2005), (a) David Dowe is the only living person mentioned in the table of contents, where his name appears twice, (c) David Dowe is the living person whose name and work are most mentioned in the index, (d) other than Chris Wallace himself, (in the reference list) David Dowe is the most cited author. Wallace & Dowe (1999a) was once the Computer J (OUP)'s most downloaded article - and currently remains as Chris Wallace's most cited co-authored work by a researcher still active in the area. David Dowe co-authored the first papers on MML Bayesian nets which combine both discrete (multi-valued) and continuous-valued attributes. Hernandez-Orallo & Dowe (2010) is currently the Artificial Intelligence journal's most downloaded article. [See also http://users.dsic.upv.es/proy/anynt .] David Dowe has a forthcoming (2011) piece on MML to appear in the forthcoming Handbook of Philosophy of Statistics, Elsevier. David Dowe is chairing the www.Solomonoff85thMemorial.monash.edu.auconference (with two Turing Award winners on the Program committee). It is a requirement of Monash University (in coastal Melbourne, Australia) that students have at least a minimum proficiency in the English language in at least one of IELTS and/or TOEFL. See www.MRGS.monash.edu.au <http://www.mrgs.monash.edu.au/> for more information. - - ----------------------- - - Prospective students should direct their enquiries to David Dowe.
