Glossary

Amplitude	A measure of the magnitude of a wave's oscillation; that is, the magnitude of the maximum disturbance in the medium during one wave cycle. When the amplitude of a sound wave changes, a listener would hear a change in pitch.
Anchoring	A cognitive bias. A tendency to rely too heavily, or anchor, on one trait or piece of information when making decisions. Also, a heuristic which influences the way people assess probabilities, by starting with an implicitly suggested reference point (the anchor) and making adjustments to it to reach a conclusion.
Attractor	A state or behavior toward which a dynamic system tends to evolve, represented as a point or orbit in the system's phase space.
Axon	A long, slender projection of a nerve cell, or neuron, that conducts electrical impulses away from the neuron's cell body.
Bayesian Theory	Bayesian Theory holds that the concept of probability can be defined as the degree to which a person believes a proposition. Bayesians assign probabilities to any statement whatsoever, even when no random process is involved, as a way to represent its subjective plausibility. Bayesian Theory also suggests that Bayes' Rule can be used as a rule to infer or update the degree of belief in light of new information.
Bayes' Rule	The probability of an event A conditional on another event B is generally different from the probability of B conditional on A. However, there is a definite relationship between the two, and Bayes' Rule is the statement of that relationship. Frequentist and Bayesian interpretations, however, disagree about the kinds of things to which probabilities should be assigned in applications. Frequentists assign probabilities to random events according to their frequencies of occurrence or to subsets of populations as proportions of the whole; Bayesians assign probabilities to propositions that are uncertain. A consequence is that Bayesians have more frequent occasion to use Bayes' Rule.
Bifurcation Theory	A small smooth branching made to the parameter values (the bifurcation parameters) of a system causes a sudden 'qualitative' or topological change in the system's long-term dynamical behavior.
Black Swan	A large-impact, hard-to-predict, and rare event beyond the realm of normal expectations.
Bounded Rationality	A human decision theory that relies on heuristics rather than the strict rule of optimization. It is characterized by: 1) limiting the sorts of utility (preferences) functions; 2) recognizing the costs of gathering and processing information; and 3) employing a "vector" or "multi-valued" utility function —Herbert Simon, the father of bounded rationality.
Causality	A causes B and B causes C. The linear sequencing of discrete events.
Cerebellum Function	The brain's regulator of the timing of movements. The timing and amplitude of learned movements are encoded by the cerebellum. The cerebellum sends information to the muscles causing them to move which provides feedback on the position of the body in space. The cerebellum integrates these pathways, using the constant feedback on body position to fine-tune motor movements.
Chaotic Attractor	An attractor that does not settle down.
Chaotic System	1. must be sensitive to initial conditions, 2. must be topologically mixing, and 3. its periodic orbits must be dense--Sensitivity to intial conditions means that each point in such a system is arbitrarily closely approximated by other points with significantly different future trajectories. Thus, an abitrarily small perturbation of the current trajectory may lead to significantly different future behaviour.
Choice	An option, alternative, preference, or selection usually associated with process-oriented studies.
Class	A type or kind; a group. Example: A dog is a class, which is a subclass of animal; my dog is an object of the class "dog.'
Compensatory	A strategy in which at least one cue can be outweighed by other cues. It integrates some of the available information and makes trade-offs between the relevant cues to form an overall evaluation of each alternative. Compensatory strategies evaluate each alternative on its own merit by comparing scores. The scores must be stored in memory to be compared, which makes this strategy vulnerable to the limited capacity of the human memory.
Complex System	A system in which there are multiple interactions between many different components and objects which constantly evolve and unfold over time.
Criterion	A test upon which cues are evaluated to determine or infer a decision.
Cross Validation	Analyzing criteria with objects that fall outside the environment.
Cue	A statistic (data) or signal extracted from an object that indicates its state or behavior in order to make a decision.
Cue Profile	The total of an object's cue values.
Dawes' Rule	A decision strategy: add all the number of positive cue values and subtract the number of negative cue values. It does not involve much computation.
Decision Strategy	Usually based on an individual's prior experience of decision-making. A situation prompts a particular decision strategy. Especially under time restraints, individuals use simple heuristic strategies that require little information, no information integration, and cues, in a "most important first" order, to gather inferences to make a decision.
Declarative Memory	The aspect of human memory that stores facts.
Derivative	A measurement of how a function changes when the values of its inputs change. The derivative of a function at a chosen input value describes the behavior of the function near that input value.
Desiderata	That which is wanted or needed.
Deterministic	The theory that systems are governed entirely by laws.
Differentiation	The process of finding a derivative.
Discrimination Rate	A property of a cue. The frequency with which a cue discriminates between a pair of objects from the reference class. A higher discrimination rate (percentage) validates a cue's ecological validity.
Distal Stimulus	The state of objects in the world that were the cause of a proximal stimulus. Example: when a person "sees" a dog, it is because the dog (the distal stimulus) created a retinal image (the proximal stimulus) that was interpreted as a dog by the person's cognitive representation.
EBA Rule	"Elimination by Aspects." A decision strategy which eliminates all alternatives that do not exceed a specified value on the first cue examined. If more than one alternative remains, another cue is selected. This procedure is repeated until only one alternative remains. Each cue is selected with a probability proportional to its weight.
Ecological Rationality	An analysis of the structure of the environment in relation to the structure of a heuristic.
Ecological Validity	The weight of a cue. The relative frequency (percentage) that the cue correctly answers the criterion. Example: What two American cities have the larger populations (criterion)? The one with a NFL team (cue). If the cue is correct ninety percent of the time, that is the cue's ecological validity (90%).
Engram	"If the inputs to a system cause the same pattern of activity to occur repeatedly, the set of active elements constituting that pattern will become increasingly and more strongly inter-associated." That is, each element will tend to turn on every other element (with positive weights) and turn off elements (with negative weights) that do not form part of the pattern. "To put it another way, the pattern as a whole will become 'auto-associated.' We may call a learned (auto-associated) pattern an engram.""Gordon Allport.
Environment	A complex system that consists of a population of objects that act upon one another.
Event	Something that occurs at a particular place and time. In probability theory, an event is a set of outcomes to which a probability is assigned.
Event Aging	The cognitive process of remembered events decaying with time.
Event Frequency	The cognitive encoding of the frequencies of events, or quantitative estimates of events; such as recalling an accurate record of the ecological validities of a cue.
Event Significance	A significant event is remembered, whereas an insignificant event is forgotten. Example: A nearby, frightening lightening strike will be remembered, but lightening in a thunder cloud will be forgotten.
Excitation	An elevation in energy level above an arbitrary baseline energy state. The lifetime of a system in an excited state is usually short.
Explicit Memory	Conscious recollection of previous experiences and information.
Fast & Frugal Heuristics	A decsion theory based on a limited cognitive search of cues with a stopping rule to which environmental factors are applied to reach an adaptive decision.
Fractal	Refers to identical or similar shapes on ever decreasing scales. Example: the progressive branching of a tree limb or inlets and coves along a coastline. The term was coined by Benoit Mandelbrot.
Franklin's Rule	A decision strategy. Traditional requirements are: 1) a complete search"find all the available information, until the cost of time or computational constraints exceed the benefits; 2) sum all cue values multiplied by cue weights; and 3) select the object with the highest score. For modern requirement see: Linear Regression.
Frequentist	Assigns probabilities to random events, or to subsets of populations as proportions of the whole according to their frequencies of occurrence.
Function	A concept that expresses the intuitive idea of deterministic dependence between two quantities, one of which is viewed as primary (the argument of the function, or its "input") and the other as secondary (the value of the function, or its "output"). A function is a way to associate a unique output for each input of a specified type.
Good Features Rule	A decision strategy which selects the alternative with the highest number of good features, or cue value, that exceeds a specified cutoff.
Hebb's (Hebbian) Rule	"Cells that fire together, wire together." ""Any two cells or systems of cells that are repeatedly active at the same time will tend to become 'associated', so that activity in one facilitates activity in the other.""Donald Hebb.
Hebbian Learning	Learning in which simultaneous activation of cells leads to pronounced increases in synaptic strength (repitition).
Heuristics	Simple, efficient rules, that are used by people faced with complex problems or incomplete information to make decisions, come to judgments, and solve problems. Heuristics may lead to cognitive biases. Example: A bottle of wine that costs more is better tasting wine"a "price imples quality" bias. However, "Fast and Frugal" heuristics are used to make quick, accurate decisions.
Hindsight Bias	A "reconstruction of the prior judgment by "re-judging' the outcome.""Hawkins & Hastie The "I told you so." or "We're all Monday morning quarterbacks" declarations. Hindsight bias is greater for assertions where the feedback is "true" rather than "false." It can be a by-product of adaptive updating or reconstructing past judgments.
Hrair	The point at which a person is overwhelmed by concepts or change. Measurements of human short term memory capacity found a 7"2 limit, which is the maximum number of projects that one can manage simultaneously before chaos starts to ensue. The term was coined by Richard Adams in his book, "Watership Down."
Hysteresis	A property of systems (usually physical systems) that do not instantly react to the forces applied to them, but react slowly, or do not return completely to their original state. The state of such a system depends on its immediate history.
Implicit Memory	Memory which relies on previous experiences to perform a task, without conscious awareness. Leads to an illusion-of-truth effect, in which one is more likely to rate statements as true, regardless of their veracity, because they have experienced them before.
Inference	A decision based on relevant partial information. The use of inference decision making relies on both the limited time available to make a decision and the cost of making an error.
Inhibition	The assumption that, during the performance of any mental task, the subject goes through a series of latent alternating states of distraction and attention. A state created at synapses making them less excitable by other sources of stimulation.
Interval	The distance between any two events in space time.
Intuitive Rationality	NeuroFission's heuristic reasoning based on the assumption that the most recent information is the most relevant to the future behavior of objects.
Iteration	The process of putting a result of a calculation back into the equation to get a new result.
Judgment	An authoritative opinion usually associated with outcome-oriented studies.
LaPlace's Demon	The law of probability expressed as casual determinism: "We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes." "LaPlace.
Lex-Add Rule	"Lexicographic Addictive Combination." A combination of two decision strategies: Lex-Semi is to select two alternatives as favorites and Dawes' Rule is to evaluate the alternatives and select the one with the highest sum.
Lexicographic	A method of organizing cues in a fixed order of validity. For example, to see which of two numbers are bigger, compare the first digits to see which is larger; if they are alike, move to the next digits and compare them, and so forth.
Lex-Semi Rule	"Lexicographic Semi-Order." A decision strategy which works like Lexicographic, with the additional assumption of a negligible difference. Pairs of alternatives with a negligible difference between the cue values are not discriminated.
Linear Regression	A statistical method of finding the linear equation that comes closest to fitting a collection of data points. Franklin's rule formalized.
Magnitude	The size of an object.
Mean Error	In linear regression analysis, an equation that finds the direction of a collection of data.
Mean Squared Error (MSE)	In statistics, the term 'error' is used for 'difference' and 'mean' for 'average'. The MSE of an estimator is the expected value of the square of the "error." The error is the amount by which the estimator differs from the quantity to be estimated. Linear Regression uses this statistical method.
Minimalist Rule	A decision strategy. Contrary to Franklin's Rule: 1) do not look up all cues (limited search), and do not combine cue values (non compensation), 2) use a simple stopping rule, 3) may use a random search.
Mnemonic	A memory aid based on the principle that the human mind much more easily remembers data attached to spatial, personal, or otherwise meaningful information than that occurring in meaningless sequences. Example: the poem""Thirty days has September, April, June and November, etc.""which helps to remember the days in a particular month.
Moore's Law	Based on the notion that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit for minimum component cost doubles every 24 months.
Neuron Network	Engram.
Neuron Weight	The weight between two neurons increases if they activate simultaneously and decreases if they activate separately. Neurons with similar positive or negative charges will have a higher weight between them, and those with dissimilar charges will have a lower weight.
New Rationality	Four schools: 1) Unbounded rationality 2) Optimization and constraints 3) Bounded"Pleasure heuristics 4) Bounded"Fast and frugal heuristics.
Node	Neuron.
Noise	Fluctuations in and the addition of external factors to the stream of target information (signaldata) being received at a detector.
Non-Compensatory	A strategy where one cue cannot be outweighed by any combination of less important cues. Example: The lexicographic process in which a fixed order determines precedence; such as, the alphabetical arrangement of words only rely on the first letter of each word; if two or more words have the same first letter, then precedence relies on the second letters, and so on.
Normalization	The comparison of similar parts of a system by enlarging small ones or shrinking large ones so they are about the same size. Example: enlarging the smallest twigs at the end of a tree branch and comparing them to the first branching from the trunk.
Object	Something which can be seen, touched, or otherwise sensed. The American philosopher, Charles Sanders Pierce (1839-1914) defined it this way: "By an object, I mean anything that we can think, i.e. anything we can talk about." A dog is an example of a tangible object, and also an instance of a type (class) called "dog," which is a subclass of the class "animal." All objects have state and behavior. Dogs have a name, color, and breed (state), and will bark, eat, and wag their tails (behavior). An intangible object could be a stock in the complex system of the stock market: stocks have names and ratings (state) and their values and ratings go up, down, and stay flat (behavior).
Occum's Razor	A theory that prefers the simplest model to explain the data. When multiple competing theories are equal in other respects, the principle of Occum's Razor recommends selecting the theory that introduces the fewest assumptions and postulates the fewest hypothetical entities.
Optimization/Constraints	Inferences or bets force risk. Reasoning uses a stopping rule based on time, expense, and resources. When time and expense outweighs the benefits, there is optimization which signals to stop the search.
Outlier	An observation that is numerically distant from the rest of the data. Indicative of data points that belong to a different population than the rest of the sample set.
Phase Space	A way of looking at a system by viewing the interrelationship of selected variables over time. The variables represent the state of the system. Instead of plotting position versus time, it is a way of plotting velocity against position, creating patterns called attractors.
Pleasure Heuristics	A search based on utility cues. Example: A mouse moves around until it sees or smells food, and acts on either cue that fulfills its aspiration.
Positive Bias	The combination of a positive cue value and an unknown cue value stops a search.
Poximal Stimulus	Physical stimulation that is available to be measured by an observer's sensory apparatus.
Prediction	A statement or claim that a particular event will occur in the future in more certain terms than a forecast.
Preference	A decision often made between gambles, which measures performance by the expected payoff. Preference relies on artificial rather than real-world environments.
Probabilistic Revolution	Old thought held that certainty was measured by demonstrative proof. New thought purports that certainty is measured by probable reasoning; thus, the Age of Reason and a new rationality.
Procedural Memory	Also known as implicit memory, is the long-term memory of skills and procedures, or "how to" accomplish a task. Example: riding a bike. The procedure can be very durable in memory, but the subject rider cannot easily put the process into words. Thus, it is a non-conscious procedure.
Qualitative Research	The reasons behind various aspects of behavior. The how and why of decision making. An exploratory organization of data for the purpose of analysis.
Quantitative Research	The measurement of a continuous property, called a "unit.'
Recognition Heuristic	If the recognition heuristic is valid, a search for further knowledge is not needed. If not valid, an inference is made using other heuristics.
Resonance	The tendency of a system to oscillate at maximum amplitude at a certain frequency.
Sample Space	In probability theory, the sample space is the set of all possible outcomes from experiment or random trials. Example: the sample space set for flipping a coin is heads or tails; for throwing a die, it is 1, 2. 3. 4, 5, 6.
Sample Space Set	(See Sample Space)
Semantic Memory	The memory of meanings, understandings, and other concept-based knowledge. Together, semantic and episodic memory make up the category of declarative memory, which is one of the two major divisions of memory. Its counterpart is procedural memory, or implicit memory.
Sentience	The faculty through which the external environment is sensed. A capacity for sensation or feeling.
Signal	Any time-varying or spatial-varying quantity. The vector of an object. In the physical world, any quantity measurable through space-time. Within a complex system, any set of information or machine data.
Space-time	The combination off space and time into a single construct called the space-time continuum. Space-time is usually interpreted with space being three-dimensional and time playing the role of the fourth dimension.
Stopping Rule	A rule that decides when to end a search for information and to make a decision.
Supervenience	To be dependent on a set of facts or properties in such a way that change can occur only after change has occurred in those facts or properties. Example: a set of properties A supervenes on a set of properties B, if and only if any two objects x and y, which share all properties in B (are "B-indiscernible"), must also share all properties in A (are "A-indiscernible"). That is, A-properties supervene on B-properties, if being B-indiscernible impies being A-indiscernible.
Synapse	Synapse allow nerve cells to communicate with one another through axons and dendrites by converting electrical impulses into chemical signals.
Synaptic Plasticity	The ability of the synaptic connection between two neurons to change in strength.
Take the Best	A variation of the Minimalist Rule. Select the object with the highest cue value with the highest validity. If two or more objects have the same cue values, than select the cue with the highest validity, and so on. Cues are looked up in order of the highest validity. Decisions are generalized and are not quantitative estimates.
Technological Singularitiy	A future time when machines surpass human intellect and become capable of recursively augmenting their own mental abilities, until they vastly exceed those of their creators.
Trend Line	A graphic representation of a trend, the long-term movement in a time series data. It shows whether a particular data set (say GDP, oil prices or stock prices) have increased or decreased over the period of time. It is charted with a diagonal line between two or more data points over time period.
Unbounded Rationality	The "Twilight of Probability""John Locke. LaPlace postulated that the future is fickle and uncertain. Humans cannot know the world, therefore, they rely on inferences, bets, or probabilities in statistical calculations.
Utility	In economics, a measure ("util") of the relative happiness or satisfaction (gratification) gained.
Vector	A concept characterized by a magnitude and a direction.
Velocity	The rate of displacement of an object. It is a vector physical quantity, in which both speed and direction are required to define it.
Weight	A value given to an object based on its ecological validity and utility.
Weighted Addictive Rule	In Franklin's Rule, the sum of cue validities.
Weighted Pros Rule	A decision strategy that selects the alternative with the highest sum of weighted "pros," or a cue having a higher value for one alternative than it has for the others. The weight of each "pro" is defined by the validity of the particular cue.