One natural way to express preferences over items is to represent them in the form of pairwise comparisons, from which a model is learned in order to predict further preferences. In this setting, if an item a is preferred to the item b, then it is natural to consider that the preference still holds after multiplying both vectors by a positive scalar (e.g., 2a≻2b). Such invariance to scaling is satisfied in maximum margin learning approaches for pairs of test vectors, but not for the preference input pairs, i.e., scaling the inputs in a different way could result in a different preference relation being learned. In addition to the scaling of preference inputs, maximum margin methods are also sensitive to the way used for normalizing (scaling) the features, which is an essential pre-processing phase for these methods. In this paper, we define and analyse more cautious preference relations that are invariant to the scaling of features, or preference inputs, or both simultaneously; this leads to computational methods for testing dominance with respect to the induced relations, and for generating optimal solutions (i.e., best items) among a set of alternatives. In our experiments, we compare the relations and their associated optimality sets based on their decisiveness, computation time and cardinality of the optimal set.

In the task of preference learning, there can be natural invariance properties that one might often expect a method to satisfy. These include (i) invariance to scaling of a pair of alternatives, e.g., replacing a pair (a,b) by (2a,2b); and (ii) invariance to rescaling of features across all alternatives. Maximum margin learning approaches satisfy such invariance properties for pairs of test vectors, but not for the preference input pairs, i.e., scaling the inputs in a different way could result in a different preference relation. In this paper we define and analyse more cautious preference relations that are invariant to the scaling of features, or inputs, or both simultaneously; this leads to computational methods for testing dominance with respect to the induced relations, and for generating optimal solutions among a set of alternatives. In our experiments, we compare the relations and their associated optimality sets based on their decisiveness, computation time and cardinality of the optimal set. We also discuss connections with imprecise probability.

Support Vector Machines (SVM) are among the most well-known machine learning methods, with broad use in different scientific areas. However, one necessary pre-processing phase for SVM is normalization (scaling) of features, since SVM is not invariant to the scales of the features’ spaces, i.e., different ways of scaling may lead to different results. We define a more robust decision-making approach for binary classification, in which one sample strongly belongs to a class if it belongs to that class for all possible rescalings of features. We derive a way of characterising the approach for binary SVM that allows determining when an instance strongly belongs to a class and when the classification is invariant to rescaling. The characterisation leads to a computation method to determine whether one sample is strongly positive, strongly negative or neither. Our experimental results back up the intuition that being strongly positive suggests stronger confidence that an instance really is positive.

Sharing car journeys can be very beneficial, since it can save travel costs, as well as reducing traffic congestion and pollution. The process of matching riders and drivers automatically at short notice, is referred to as dynamic ridesharing, which has attracted a lot of attention in recent years. In this paper, amongst the wide range of challenges in dynamic ridesharing, we consider the problem of ride-matching. While existing studies mainly consider fixed assignments of participants in the matching process, our main contribution is focused on the learning of the user preferences regarding the desirability of a choice of matching; this could then form an important component of a system that can generate robust matchings that maintain high user satisfaction, thus encouraging repeat usage of the system. An SVM inspired method is exploited which is able to learn a scoring function from a set of preferences; this function measures the predicted satisfaction degree of the user regarding specific matches. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to present a model that is able to implicitly learn individual preferences of participants. Our experimental results, which are conducted on a real ridesharing data set, show the effectiveness of our approach.