Chance Discoveries in Real World Decision Making

Book excerpt: For this book, the editors invited and called for contributions from indispensable research areas relevant to "chance discovery," which has been defined as the discovery of events significant for making a decision, and studied since 2000. From respective research areas as artificial intelligence, mathematics, cognitive science, medical science, risk management, methodologies for design and communication, the invited and selected authors in this book present their particular approaches to chance discovery. The chapters here show contributions to identifying rare or hidden events and explaining their significance, predicting future trends, communications for scenario development in marketing and design, identification effects and side-effects of medicines, etc. The methods presented in this book are based on the interaction of human, machine, and human's living environment, rather than based purely automated predictions of the future. This is a promising direction of computer-supported decision of human in a radically changing environment.