Empirical Model Learning: Merging knowledge-based and data-driven decision models through machine learning

<p>Designing good models is one of the main challenges for obtaining realistic and useful decision support and optimization systems. Traditionally combinatorial models are crafted by interacting with domain experts with limited accuracy guarantees. Nowadays we have access to data sets of unprecedented scale and accuracy about the systems we are deciding on. 

<p>In this talk we propose a methodology called Empirical Model Learning that uses machine learning to extract data-driven decision model components and integrates them into an expert-designed decision model. We outline the main domains where EML could be useful and we show how to ground Empirical Model Learning on a problem of thermal-aware workload allocation and scheduling on a multi-core platform. 

<p>In addition, we discuss how to use EML with different optimization and machine learning techniques, and we provide some hints about recent work on EML for hierarchical optimization and on-line/off-line optimization.