History of PATH in IEEE

For those with access to IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems online, PATH researcher Steven Shladover has written a 20 year retrospective of the organization. The abstract reads thusly:

The California Partners for Advanced Transit and Highways (PATH) Program was founded in 1986, as the first research program in North America focused on the subject now known as intelligent transportation systems (ITS). This paper reviews the history of the founding of PATH and of the national ITS program in the U.S., providing perspective on the changes that have occurred during the past 20 years.

Schladover explains well the significance of 20 years for the booming ITS field and some of the generational shifts that have occurred since its inception.

Transportation Seminar and Cookie Time 12 October: Newtons and Neural Networks

This weeks talk, upon our 3:30 'Cookie Time,' is presented by PATH researcher Xiao-Yun Lu. The paper has something to do with logit models, mathematics, and neural networks. I'll let the abstract do the talking:

This seminar is to discuss the representability of discrete logit-type models including multinomial logit and nested logit model from a mathematical approach instead of a statistical approach by Prof. D. McFadden. It is shown that the logit-type models can be reconstructed from mathematical approximation theory with sigmoidal functions widely used in Neural Network modeling without the basic assumptions such as IIA and iid, and the distribution (or density) function of the unobserved portion of utility. This explains mathematically why logit-type models can approximate the choice probability function to some accuracy. It is hoped that this may suggest the way to improve the accuracy in model specification for logit type models.

Please come by for some snacks beforehand.