Theories and practices to assess critical information in acomplex adaptive systemOrganized for readers to follow along easily, The Fitness ofInformation: Quantitative Assessments of Critical Evidenceprovides a structured outline of the key challenges in assessingcrucial information in a complex adaptive system. Illustrating avariety of computational and explanatory challenges, the bookdemonstrates principles and practical implications of exploring andassessing the fitness of information in an extensible framework ofadaptive landscapes.The book's first three chapters introduce fundamentalprinciples and practical examples in connection to the nature ofaesthetics, mental models, and the subjectivity of evidence. Inparticular, the underlying question is how these issues can beaddressed quantitatively, not only computationally but alsoexplanatorily. The next chapter illustrates how one can reduce thelevel of complexity in understanding the structure and dynamics ofscientific knowledge through the design and use of the CiteSpacesystem for visualizing and analyzing emerging trends in scientificliterature. The following two chapters explain the concepts ofstructural variation and the fitness of information in a frameworkthat builds on the idea of fitness landscape originally introducedto study population evolution. The final chapter presents adual-map overlay technique and demonstrates how it supports avariety of analytic tasks for a new type of portfolioanalysis.The Fitness of Information: Quantitative Assessments of CriticalEvidence also features:* In-depth case studies and examples that characterizefar-reaching concepts, illustrate underlying principles, anddemonstrate profound challenges and complexities at various levelsof analytic reasoning* Wide-ranging topics that underline the common theme, from thesubjectivity of evidence in criminal trials to detecting earlysigns of critical transitions and mechanisms behind radicalpatents* An extensible and unifying framework for visual analytics bytransforming analytic reasoning tasks to the assessment of criticalevidenceThe Fitness of Information: Quantitative Assessments of CriticalEvidence is a suitable reference for researchers, analysts, andpractitioners who are interested in analyzing evidence and makingdecisions with incomplete, uncertain, and even conflictinginformation. The book is also an excellent textbook forupper-undergraduate and graduate-level courses on visual analytics,information visualization, and business analytics and decisionsupport systems.