Semantic Entropy (E)
A time series is uniquely represented by its geometric shape, which also carries information. A time series can be modelled as the trajectory of a particle moving in a force field with one degree of freedom. The force acting on the particle shapes the trajectory of its motion, which is made up of elementary shapes of infinitesimal neighborhoods of points in the trajectory. It has been proved that an infinitesimal neighborhood of a point in a continuous time series can have at least 29 different shapes or configurations. So information can be encoded in it in at least 29 different ways. A 3-point neighborhood (the smallest) in a discrete time series can have precisely 13 different shapes or configurations. In other words, a discrete time series can be expressed as a string of 13 symbols. Across diverse real as well as simulated data sets it has been observed that 6 of them occur more frequently and the remaining 7 occur less frequently. Based on frequency distribution of 13 configurations or 13 different ways of information encoding a novel entropy measure, called semantic entropy (E), has been defined. Following notion of power in Newtonian mechanics of the moving particle whose trajectory is the time series, a notion of information power (P) has been introduced for time series. E/P turned out to be an important indicator of synchronous behaviour of time series as observed in epileptic EEG signals. …

Batch Tournament Selection (BTS)
Lexicase selection achieves very good solution quality by introducing ordered test cases. However, the computational complexity of lexicase selection can prohibit its use in many applications. In this paper, we introduce Batch Tournament Selection (BTS), a hybrid of tournament and lexicase selection which is approximately one order of magnitude faster than lexicase selection while achieving a competitive quality of solutions. Tests on a number of regression datasets show that BTS compares well with lexicase selection in terms of mean absolute error while having a speed-up of up to 25 times. Surprisingly, BTS and lexicase selection have almost no difference in both diversity and performance. This reveals that batches and ordered test cases are completely different mechanisms which share the same general principle fostering the specialization of individuals. This work introduces an efficient algorithm that sheds light onto the main principles behind the success of lexicase, potentially opening up a new range of possibilities for algorithms to come. …

Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence
Humans are increasingly coming into contact with artificial intelligence and machine learning systems. Human-centered artificial intelligence is a perspective on AI and ML that algorithms must be designed with awareness that they are part of a larger system consisting of humans. We lay forth an argument that human-centered artificial intelligence can be broken down into two aspects: (1) AI systems that understand humans from a sociocultural perspective, and (2) AI systems that help humans understand them. We further argue that issues of social responsibility such as fairness, accountability, interpretability, and transparency. …

Paired Leave-one-out Potential Outcome (P-LOOP)
In paired experiments, participants are grouped into pairs with similar characteristics, and one observation from each pair is randomly assigned to treatment. Because of both the pairing and the randomization, the treatment and control groups should be well balanced; however, there may still be small chance imbalances. It may be possible to improve the precision of the treatment effect estimate by adjusting for these imbalances. Building on related work for completely randomized experiments, we propose the P-LOOP (paired leave-one-out potential outcomes) estimator for paired experiments. We leave out each pair and then impute its potential outcomes using any prediction algorithm. The imputation method is flexible; for example, we could use lasso or random forests. While similar methods exist for completely randomized experiments, covariate adjustment methods in paired experiments are relatively understudied. A unique trade-off exists for paired experiments, where it can be unclear whether to factor in pair assignments when making adjustments. We address this issue in the P-LOOP estimator by automatically deciding whether to account for the pairing when imputing the potential outcomes. By addressing this trade-off, the method has the potential to improve precision over existing methods. …