Simulation-based training (SBT) is gaining popularity as a low-cost and convenient training technique in a vast range of applications. However, for a SBT platform to be fully utilized as an effective training tool, it is essential that feedback on performance is provided automatically in real-time during training. It is the aim of this paper to develop an efficient and effective feedback generation method for the provision of real-time feedback in SBT. Existing methods either have low effectiveness in improving novice skills or suffer from low efficiency, resulting in their inability to be used in real-time. In this paper, we propose a neural network based method to generate feedback using the adversarial technique. The proposed method utilizes a bounded adversarial update to minimize a L1 regularized loss via back-propagation. We empirically show that the proposed method can be used to generate simple, yet effective feedback. Also, it was observed to have high effectiveness and efficiency when compared to existing methods, thus making it a promising option for real-time feedback generation in SBT.
As demands on surgical training efficiency increase, there is a stronger need for computer assisted surgical training systems. The ability to provide automated performance feedback and assessment is a critical aspect of such systems. The development of feedback and assessment models will allow the use of surgical simulators as self-guided training systems that act like expert trainers and guide trainees towards improved performance. This paper presents an approach based on Random Forest models to analyse data recorded during surgery using a virtual reality temporal bone simulator and generate meaningful automated real-time performance feedback. The training dataset consisted of 27 temporal bone simulation runs composed of 16 expert runs provided by 7 different experts and 11 trainee runs provided by 6 trainees. We demonstrate how Random Forest models can be used to predict surgical expertise and deliver feedback that improves trainees’ surgical technique. We illustrate the potential of the approach through a feasibility study. Most data mining algorithms and tools stop at discovered customer models, producing distribution information on customer profiles. Such techniques, when applied to industrial problems such as customer relationship management (CRM), are useful in pointing out customers who are likely attritors and customers who are loyal, but they require human experts to postprocess the mined information manually. Most of the postprocessing techniques have been limited to producing visualization results and interestingness ranking, but they do not directly suggest actions that would lead to an increase the objective function such as profit. Here, we present a novel algorithm that suggest actions to change customers from an undesired status (such as attritors) to a desired one (such as loyal) while maximizing objective function: the expected net profit. We develop these algorithms under resource constraints that are abound in reality. The contribution of the work is in taking the output from an existing mature technique (decision trees, for example), and producing novel, actionable knowledge through automatic postprocessing. Most data mining algorithms and tools stop at discovered customer models, producing distribution information on customer profiles. Such techniques, when applied to industrial problems such as customer relationship management (CRM), are useful in pointing out customers who are likely attritors and customers who are loyal, but they require human experts to postprocess the discovered knowledge manually. Most of the postprocessing techniques have been limited to producing visualization results and interestingness ranking, but they do not directly suggest actions that would lead to an increase in the objective function such as profit. In this paper, we present novel algorithms that suggest actions to change customers from an undesired status (such as attritors) to a desired one (such as loyal) while maximizing an objective function: the expected net profit. These algorithms can discover cost-effective actions to transform customers from undesirable classes to desirable ones. The approach we take integrates data mining and decision making tightly by formulating the decision making problems directly on top of the data mining results in a postprocessing step. To improve the effectiveness of the approach, we also present an ensemble of decision trees which is shown to be more robust when the training data changes. Empirical tests are conducted on both a realistic insurance application domain and UCI benchmark data Additive tree models (ATMs) are widely used for data mining and machine learning. Important examples of ATMs include random forest, adaboost (with decision trees as weak learners), and gradient boosted trees, and they are often referred to as the best off-the-shelf classifiers. Though capable of attaining high accuracy, ATMs are not well interpretable in the sense that they do not provide actionable knowledge for a given instance. This greatly limits the potential of ATMs on many applications such as medical prediction and business intelligence, where practitioners need suggestions on actions that can lead to desirable outcomes with minimum costs. To address this problem, we present a novel framework to post-process any ATM classifier to extract an optimal actionable plan that can change a given input to a desired class with a minimum cost. In particular, we prove the NP-hardness of the optimal action extraction problem for ATMs and formulate this problem in an integer linear programming formulation which can be efficiently solved by existing packages. We also empirically demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework by conducting comprehensive experiments on challenging real-world datasets.