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Decision-making under uncertainty and causal thinking are fundamental aspects of intelligent reasoning. Decision-making has been well studied when the available information is considered at the associative (probabilistic) level. The classical Theorems of von Neumann-Morgenstern and Savage provide a formal criterion for rational choice using associative information: maximize expected utility. There is an ongoing debate around the origin of probabilities involved in such calculation. In this work, we will show how the probabilities for decision-making can be grounded in causal models by considering decision problems in which the available actions and consequences are causally connected. In this setting, actions are regarded as an intervention over a causal model. Then, we extend a previous causal decision-making result, which relies on a known causal model, to the case in which the causal mechanism that controls some environment is unknown to a rational decision-maker. In this way, action-outcome probabilities can be grounded in causal models in known and unknown cases. Finally, as an application, we extend the well-known concept of Nash Equilibrium to the case in which the players of a strategic game consider causal information.

The main purpose of this work is to obtain a mathematical model consistent with the thermal behavior of concentrating solar cookers, such as Jorhejpataranskua. We also want to simulate different conditions respect to the parameters involved of several materials for its construction and efficiency. The model is expressed in terms of a coupled nonlinear system of differential equations which are solved using Mathematica 8. The results obtained by our model are compared with measurements of solar cooker in field testing operation. We obtained good results in agreement with experimental data. Moreover, the simulation results are used by calculating cooking power and standardized cooking power of solar cooker for different parameters., Comment: Keywords: Solar cooker, thermal model; mathematical model

It applies a mathematical model of solid formation, the model of Avrami-Kolgomorov [Ausloos & Petroni, 2007] to model the time evolution of percentage of adherents of the major religions practiced in Mexico, adjusting the corresponding parameters with available records in the period from 1950 to 2000 [Molina-Hernandez, 2003; INEGI, 2005]. A comparison is made with the application of the model to global trends and concludes that Catholicism is in a marked disaggregation and trends of Christianity in Mexico are similar to global.