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An explication of uncertain evidence in Bayesian networks: likelihood evidence and probabilistic evidence

journal contribution
posted on 2015-12-02, 16:07 authored by Ali Ben Mrad, Veronique Delcroix, Sylvain Piechowiak, Philip LeicesterPhilip Leicester, Mohamed Abid
This paper proposes a systematized presentation and a terminology for observations in a Bayesian network. It focuses on the three main concepts of uncertain evidence, namely likelihood evidence and fixed and not-fixed probabilistic evidence, using a review of previous literature. A probabilistic finding on a variable is specified by a local probability distribution and replaces any former belief in that variable. It is said to be fixed or not fixed regarding whether it has to be kept unchanged or not after the arrival of observation on other variables. Fixed probabilistic evidence is defined by Valtorta et al. (J Approx Reason 29(1):71–106 2002) under the name soft evidence, whereas the concept of not-fixed probabilistic evidence has been discussed by Chan and Darwiche (Artif Intell 163(1):67–90 2005). Both concepts have to be clearly distinguished from likelihood evidence defined by Pearl (1988), also called virtual evidence, for which evidence is specified as a likelihood ratio, that often represents the unreliability of the evidence. Since these three concepts of uncertain evidence are not widely understood, and the terms used to describe these concepts are not well established, most Bayesian networks engines do not offer well defined propagation functions to handle them. Firstly, we present a review of uncertain evidence and the proposed terminology, definitions and concepts related to the use of uncertain evidence in Bayesian networks. Then we describe updating algorithms for the propagation of uncertain evidence. Finally, we propose several results where the use of fixed or not-fixed probabilistic evidence is required.

Funding

This research has been supported by the International Campus on Safety and Intermodality in Transportation; the Nord/Pas-de-Calais Region, the European Community, the Regional Delegation for Research and Technology, the Ministry of Higher Education and Research, and the National Center for Scientific Research.

History

School

  • Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering

Published in

Applied Intelligence

Volume

43

Issue

4

Pages

802 - 824

Citation

MRAD, A.B. ... et al, 2015. An explication of uncertain evidence in Bayesian networks: likelihood evidence and probabilistic evidence. Applied Intelligence, 43 (4), pp. 802 - 824.

Publisher

© Springer

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Publication date

2015

Notes

This paper is closed access.

ISSN

0924-669X

eISSN

1573-7497

Language

  • en