This work is an initial exploration of the use of the decision-theoretic concept of utility to guide pattern mining. We present the use of utility functions as against thresholds and constraints as the mechanism to express user preferences and formulate several pattern mining problems that use...

Existing preference reasoning systems have been successful insimple domains. Broader success requires more natural and moreexpressive preference representations. This thesis develops arepresentation of logical preferences that combines numericaltradeoff ratios between partial outcome...

The well-known Easterlin paradox points out that average happiness has remained constant over time despite sharp rises in GNP per head. At the same time, a micro literature has typically found positive correlations between individual income and individual measures of subjective well-being. This...