Judgment Analysis in a Dynamic Multitask Environment: Capturing Nonlinear Policies Using Decision Trees
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Policy capturing is a judgment analysis method that typically uses linear statistical modeling to estimate expert judgments. A variant to this technique is to capture decision policies using data-mining algorithms designed to handle nonlinear decision rules, missing attributes, and noisy data. In the current study, we tested the effectiveness of a decision-tree induction algorithm and an instance-based classification method for policy capturing in comparison to the standard linear approach. Decision trees are relevant in naturalistic decision-making contexts since they can be used to represent “fast-and-frugal” judgment heuristics, which are well suited to describe human cognition under time pressure. We examined human classification behavior using a simulated naval air defense task in order to empirically compare the C4.5 decision-tree algorithm, the k-nearest neighbors algorithm, and linear regression on their ability to capture individual decision policies. Results show that C4.5 outperformed the other methods in terms of goodness of fit and cross-validation accuracy. Decision-tree models of individuals’ judgment policies actually classified contacts more accurately than their human counterparts, resulting in a threefold reduction in error rates. We conclude that a decision-tree induction algorithm can yield useful models for training and decision support applications, and we discuss the application of judgmental bootstrapping in real time in dynamic environments.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.006 | 0.034 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".