Towards a Monotonicity-Compliant Price Index for the Art Market

Notwithstanding almost forty years of efforts, the market for paintings still lacks a widely accepted price index. In this paper, we introduce a simple and intuitive metric to construct such index. Our metric is based on the price of a painting divided by its area. This formulation rests on a solid mathematical foundation as it corresponds to a particular type of hedonic model. However, unlike indexes based on the time-dummy coefficients of conventional hedonic models, this index satisfies the monotonicity condition. We demonstrate with a simple example the advantages of our metric. We also show the dangers of relying on the time-dummy coefficients of conventional hedonic models to estimate returns and generate price indexes.Comment: 15 pages 3 figure

Deep Exponential Families

We describe \textit{deep exponential families} (DEFs), a class of latent variable models that are inspired by the hidden structures used in deep neural networks. DEFs capture a hierarchy of dependencies between latent variables, and are easily generalized to many settings through exponential families. We perform inference using recent "black box" variational inference techniques. We then evaluate various DEFs on text and combine multiple DEFs into a model for pairwise recommendation data. In an extensive study, we show that going beyond one layer improves predictions for DEFs. We demonstrate that DEFs find interesting exploratory structure in large data sets, and give better predictive performance than state-of-the-art models

A Hierarchical Latent Variable Encoder-Decoder Model for Generating Dialogues

Sequential data often possesses a hierarchical structure with complex dependencies between subsequences, such as found between the utterances in a dialogue. In an effort to model this kind of generative process, we propose a neural network-based generative architecture, with latent stochastic variables that span a variable number of time steps. We apply the proposed model to the task of dialogue response generation and compare it with recent neural network architectures. We evaluate the model performance through automatic evaluation metrics and by carrying out a human evaluation. The experiments demonstrate that our model improves upon recently proposed models and that the latent variables facilitate the generation of long outputs and maintain the context.Comment: 15 pages, 5 tables, 4 figure

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in Medical Education and Practice: The Major Challenges

This literature review addresses the main effects and challenges in using information and communication technologies (ICT) in medical education and practice. The first challenge is to better prepare future physicians for the changing behaviours of patients, who are increasingly Internet-savvy and who sometimes appear to know more about their diseases than their physicians. The second challenge, which is closely linked to the first, is to raise awareness among physicians in training of the many benefits of using ICT to improve not only the quality of interventions and health care delivery but, from a broader perspective, the organization of the health care system itself. The third challenge is to motivate medical students and practitioners to use ICT to find information, learn and develop. It is proposed that information literacy should be a mandatory skill for all medical students. The e-learning mode of training is also addressed. Although underemployed in most medical faculties, it represents the future of initial and continuous medical training. Virtual resources and communities, simulations and 3D animations are also discussed. The fourth and final challenge is to change medical teaching practices.Cette revue de la littérature présente les principaux impacts et défis engendrés par les technologies de l’information et de la communication (TIC) sur l’éducation médicale et la pratique de la médecine. Le premier défi est celui de mieux préparer les futurs médecins à l’évolution du comportement des patients qui sont de plus en plus branchés et qui, parfois, semblent mieux informés sur leur maladie que ne l’est le praticien. Le deuxième défi, intimement lié au premier, est celui de sensibiliser les futurs praticiens aux nombreux avantages que comportent les TIC pour la qualité des interventions et des soins fournis aux patients mais également, à un niveau plus large, pour l’organisation du système des soins de santé. Amener les futurs médecins à faire usage des TIC pour s’informer, apprendre et se perfectionner constitue le troisième défi présenté. La compétence informationnelle est notamment mise de l’avant comme une habileté devant impérativement faire partie de la formation de tout médecin. La question du e-learning est également abordée puisque ce mode d’enseignement, encore trop peu répandu dans bon nombre de facultés de médecine, constitue l’avenir de la formation médicale initiale ou continue. Les ressources et les communautés virtuelles, les simulateurs et l’animation 3D sont également évoqués. Changer les pratiques en pédagogie médicale constitue le quatrième et dernier défi relevé dans la littérature scientifique