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Los Angeles (LA) Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Technical Activity Committee on Artificial Intelligence (TACART)

             TACART

TOPIC:       CAPES: the Countrywide Automatic
                Property Evaluation System

SPEAKER:     Dr. Ingemar Hulthage
             Countrwide Home Loans

DATE:        20 May 1998 (Wednesday night)

TIME:        The talk will begin at 7:30.

PLACE:       Loyola Marymount University, Pereira Hall 27.
             LMU is located at Loyola Blvd. and 80th Street in
             Westchester. From the 405, take the Manchester exit
             and proceed west to Loyola Blvd.  Turn north, and
             continue until you enter the LMU campus.  Ask the
             guard for directions to Pereira Hall. Parking is free.

ABSTRACT:    The purpose of CAPES is to estimate the market value 
             of residential properties.  CAPES differs from 
             other property valuation systems by using
             heuristic search as the core of the evaluation 
             engine.  The main principle of appraising 
             is to select a set of "comparable" properties that 
             have recently sold in so-called "arms length" 
             transactions. If the concept of comparable property 
             was well defined, and if sufficient information to
             identify comparable properties was always available, 
             there would be no need to search. The only thing
             needed would be a set of rules, or constraints,
             to classify properties as suitable or unsuitable 
             for a specific appraisal.  However, experience 
             shows that when a fixed set of criteria are applied, 
             in many cases either a too small or an unnecessarily 
             large set of comparables is selected.  This 
             situation suggests searching for a set of comparables
             that optimizes the accuracy of an appraisal based on 
             that set. The operators in the search select a subset 
             of a given set. Because the true error is not known, 
             the search must be guided by an estimate of the error,
             such as the standard deviation of the sales prices of 
             the comp set. The accuracy of CAPES has been validated 
             extensively on batches of properties by comparing its 
             results to known sales prices.

BIOGRAPHY:   Ingemar Hulthage is the director of the 'Countrywide 
             Automatic Property Evaluation System' (CAPES) 
             at Countrywide Home Loans.  He joined Countrywide 
             in February 1996. Prior to that, he was an 
             independent consultant in the area of decision 
             support systems, and developed a system for estimating 
             losses from earthquakes and hurricanes to 
             assist in pricing insurance.  From 1991 to 1994, 
             he was a Research Associate Professor at USC, 
             working on the ACTION project, which seeks to create
             a knowledge based decision support system that 
             addresses optimized matching and coordination 
             of technological and organizational features in 
             support of business objectives.  From 1984 to 1991, 
             he was a faculty member in the Robotics Institute 
             at Carnegie-Mellon. From 1981 to 1984, he held 
             postdoctoral positions in theoretical physics at SUNY at
             Stony Brook and at Carnegie-Mellon. He received his Ph.D. 
             in theoretical physics from Stockholm University, 
             Sweden, in 1981.

DINNER:      No dinner is planned.  No social activities are planned.
NEWSGROUPS:  Announced in comp.ai, la.seminars, ca.seminars.
HOMEPAGE:    http://server.eng.lmu.edu/tacart/
CONTACTS:    L. Andrew Campbell campbell@aero.org (310) 336-8642 or
             Program Chair Barney Toma tomab@ecn.com (310) 323-8451.
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| L. Andrew Campbell     internet: campbell@aero.org       |
| M1-102 PO Box 92957    organization: The Aerospace Corp. |
| Los Angeles CA 90009   telephone: (310) 336-8642         |