CCCCatalyzing the computing research community and enabling the pursuit of innovative, high-impact research.
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Youtube
  • Rss
  • About
    • About CCC
    • Council Members
    • Council Meetings
    • CCC Council Nominations
    • Governing Documents
    • FAQ
    • Contact
  • Visioning
    • Visioning Activities
      • 2022
      • 2021
      • 2020
      • 2019
      • 2018
      • 2017
      • 2016
      • 2015
      • 2014
      • 2013
      • 2012
      • 2011 and Prior Years
    • Workshop Reports
    • RFP – Creating Visions for Computing Research
    • Blue Sky
    • CS for Social Good White Paper Competition
    • Robotics Roadmap
  • Leadership Development
    • Call for Council Nominations
    • Leadership in Science Policy Institute
    • Big Data Regional Hubs
    • Postdoc Best Practices
      • Postdoc Best Practice Final Reports
      • Postdoc Best Practice Resources
    • CIFellows
      • CIFellows 2021
      • CIFellows 2020
      • CIFellows 2020: For the Record
      • CI Fellows 2014 Workshop
      • 2011 Class
      • 2010 Class
      • 2009 Class
      • Assessment
      • Diversity
      • Success Stories
  • Task Forces
    • Computing Challenges to Humanity: Climate
    • Research Ecosystem Working Group
    • NextGen AI
    • Unique Ways to Compute
    • Socio Technical Resilience
    • Computational Challenges in Healthcare
    • Past Task Forces
      • AI Working Group
      • Weird Ways to Compute
      • Security, Integrity, and Trust
      • Future of Life in a Hybrid World
      • Computing Challenges to Humanity
  • Resources
    • CCC Call for Content
    • Workshop Reports
    • CCC-Led White Papers
    • Presentations
    • CCC Responds to the Community
    • Recent CCC Activities
    • Ongoing CCC Activities
    • CIFellows Spotlight
    • Great Innovative Ideas
    • Event Videos
    • Catalyzing Computing Podcast
    • Computing Research in Action
    • Computing Research Highlights
  • Events
    • Upcoming Events
    • Special Events
    • Past Events
    • CCC at AAAS
      • CCC at AAAS 2023
      • CCC at AAAS 2022
      • CCC at AAAS 2020
      • CCC at AAAS 2019
      • CCC at AAAS 2018
      • CCC at AAAS 2017
      • CCC at AAAS 2016
      • CCC at AAAS 2013
  • CCC by CS Area
    • AI /ML / Robotics
    • Architecture / Systems / Networking
    • Databases / Informatics / Data Science / HPC
    • Human-Computer Interaction / Graphics / Visualization
    • IoT / Ubiquitous
    • Programming Languages / Compilers / Software Engineering
    • Security / Privacy / Fairness
    • Theory / Algorithms
    • Miscellaneous
  • Blog
  • Podcast
  • Search
  • Menu

Uncertainty in Computation Workshop


   Workshop Report   

October 15-16, 2014

Omni Shoreham Hotel
Washington, DC, United States



Event Contact

CCC Staff
ccc@cra.org


Event Type

2014 Events, 2014 Visioning Activities, Visioning Activities, Workshop


Event Category

CCC

Overview

Modern science, technology, and politics are all permeated by data that comes from people, measurements, or computational processes.  However, data is often incomplete, corrupt, or lacking in sufficient accuracy and precision.  While concern for these uncertainties would seem essential to rational decision making, explicit consideration of uncertainty is rarely part of the computational and decision making pipeline.

To address this critical shortcoming in the way we process, present, and interpret data, significant improvements are needed both in the modeling of computational uncertainty and in the tools used to communicate uncertainty to decision makers.  Success will require a broad based multidisciplinary effort, involving development of a comprehensive set of foundations for representing and communicating computational uncertainty that accounts for all aspects of the problem—including the applications, the numerics, the visualizations, and the comprehension of users—in a holistic, systematic manner.

Workshop Synopsis:

Now is the appropriate time to hold a discussion about future research directions related to the modeling of uncertainty in computations and the ways in which the uncertainty inherent in many computational processes can be communicated to those tasked with making decisions based on such data. Uncertainty quantification for computational simulations is a maturing discipline, but little study has yet gone in to the relationship between uncertainty quantification and the communication of uncertainty to decision makers. Data analytics is rapidly becoming far more sophisticated and enjoying widespread use, but is still largely lacking in well principled methods for quantifying uncertainty associated with the information contained in large data sets.  The field of decision science recognizes the importance of understanding decision making under uncertainty, but much of this work is not closely integrated with either formal uncertainty quantification or the explosion of computational uncertainty associated with data analytics.

The workshop addressed these issues in two ways.  A set of research challenges will be defined that, if solved, will make the computation and utilization of uncertainty more ubiquitous in a variety of computing applications and systems.  In addition, joint goals and methods between different disciplines will be identified to help establish an interdisciplinary agenda for addressing challenges that uncertainty poses.  Success in these efforts will accomplish better decision making through a better understanding of uncertainty, better understanding of models and their accuracy by data analysis and simulation scientists, and increased credibility of computational estimates and simulations by the public through better understanding of uncertainty.

Workshop Outcomes:

The most immediate outcome of the workshop was a set of white papers describing the specific aspects of the research agenda arising out of the discussions at the workshop, along with a workshop report.

Over the longer term, workshop organizers will be engaging funding agencies about the importance of the problem of computational uncertainty and the proposed research agenda.

Agenda

October 15, 2014 (Wednesday)

07:30 AM Breakfast
08:15 AM Welcome

William Thompson

08:45 AM Overview of Uncertainty in Computation

Ross Whitaker

09:00 AM Talks and Discussion: Sources of Uncertainty in Computation

Uncertainty quantification in simulation science
George Karniadakis

Uncertainty in data analytics
Christopher Ré

Uncertainty quantification in statistics
James Berger

Al and machine learning
Vasant Honavar

10:10 AM Break
10:40 AM Talks and Discussion: Making Sense of Uncertainty in Computation

Unvertainty visualization
Alex Pang

Perception and congnition of uncertainty
Mary Hegarty

Uncertainty in decision science
Baruch Fischhoff

11:35 AM Talks and Discussion: Examples of End-to-End Considerations of Uncertainty in Computation

Uncertainty in geospatial data

Michael Goodchild

Uncertainty in weather forecasting

Eugenia Kalnay

12:15 AM Lunch
01:30 PM Panel

What should be the relationship between the sources of uncertainty in simulation and data science, methods for communicating uncertainty, and decision science? How could/should the state-of-the-art of UQ in scientific computing influence the emerging field of large-scale, data analytics?

Valentina Bosetti, Christopher Jermaine, Mike Kirby, Alan MacEachren, and Elaine Spiller

02:30 PM Panel

What are the Grand Challenge problems in uncertainty in computation? To what extent can methods for dealing with uncertainty be generalized beyond specific application domains?

Fariba Fahroo, Joseph Halpern, Charles Jackson, Elke Weber, and Joanne Wendelberger

03:30 PM Break
04:00 PM Panel

Is this the right moment to undertake a major new research initiative on Uncertainty in Computation? If so, how should we define the discipline? Is the state-of-the art such that transformational change is possible? What would be the impact of such an initiative, beyond the status quo?

Kate Beard, Derek Bingham, Christopher Johnson, George Karniadakis, and Christopher Ré

05:00 PM Planning for breakout sessions
06:30 PM Reception & Dinner

October 16, 2014 (Thursday)

07:30 AM Breakfast
08:30 AM Breakout Sessions 1 and 2
09:30 AM Breakout Sessions 3 and 4
10:30 AM Break
11:00 AM Report on Breakout Sessions

Session 1

Session 2

Session 3

Session 4

12:00 PM Lunch
01:30 PM Adjourn
CRA - Uniting Industry, Academia and Government to Advance Computing Research and Change the World.
CCC - Catalyzing the computing research community and enabling the pursuit of innovative, high-impact research.
Increasing the Success and Participation of Underrepresented Groups in Computing Research.
CRA-E - Addressing society’s need for a continuous supply of talented and well-educated computing researchers.
CERP - Promoting diversity in computing through evaluation and research.
Increasing interaction between industry partners and other organizations involved in computing research for the benefit of all.
CRA Home | Contact Us | Unsubscribe/Removal of Information | Terms of Use         © Copyright 2021 - CRA
Aging In Place Brain Workshop
Scroll to top