Special Cases

International audienceThis chapter reviews special cases of lower previsions, that are instrumental in practical applications. We emphasize their various advantages and drawbacks, as well as the kind of problems in which they can be the most useful

rivista” FUZZY POSSIBILITIES AS UPPER PREVISIONS

In this paper we analyze, mainly in a finitary setting, the consistency properties of fuzzy possibilities, interpreting them as instances of upper previsions and applying the basic notions of avoiding sure loss and coherence from the theory of imprecise probabilities. It ensues that fuzzy possibilities always avoid sure loss, but satisfy the stronger coherence condition only in a special case. Their natural extension, i.e. their least–committal correction to a coherent upper prevision, is determined. The same analysis is then performed when min is replaced by a T–norm (or seminorm) in the definition of fuzzy possibility, showing that the consistency properties and also the natural extension remain the same. Some “closure ” properties are also discussed, which are guaranteed to hold if the T–norm is continuous, and are satisfied by (ordinary) possibilities too

A framework of distributionally robust possibilistic optimization

In this paper, an optimization problem with uncertain constraint coefficients is considered. Possibility theory is used to model the uncertainty. Namely, a joint possibility distribution in constraint coefficient realizations, called scenarios, is specified. This possibility distribution induces a necessity measure in scenario set, which in turn describes an ambiguity set of probability distributions in scenario set. The distributionally robust approach is then used to convert the imprecise constraints into deterministic equivalents. Namely, the left-hand side of an imprecise constraint is evaluated by using a risk measure with respect to the worst probability distribution that can occur. In this paper, the Conditional Value at Risk is used as the risk measure, which generalizes the strict robust and expected value approaches, commonly used in literature. A general framework for solving such a class of problems is described. Some cases which can be solved in polynomial time are identified

Convex Imprecise Previsions: Basic Issues and Applications

In this paper we study two classes of imprecise previsions, which we termed convex and centered convex previsions, in the framework of Walley's theory of imprecise previsions. We show that convex previsions are related with a concept of convex natural estension, which is useful in correcting a large class of inconsistent imprecise probability assessments. This class is characterised by a condition of avoiding unbounded sure loss. Convexity further provides a conceptual framework for some uncertainty models and devices, like unnormalised supremum preserving functions. Centered convex previsions are intermediate between coherent previsions and previsions avoiding sure loss, and their not requiring positive homogeneity is a relevant feature for potential applications. Finally, we show how these concepts can be applied in (financial) risk measurement.Comment: Proceedings of ISIPTA'0

SPOCC: Scalable POssibilistic Classifier Combination -- toward robust aggregation of classifiers

We investigate a problem in which each member of a group of learners is trained separately to solve the same classification task. Each learner has access to a training dataset (possibly with overlap across learners) but each trained classifier can be evaluated on a validation dataset. We propose a new approach to aggregate the learner predictions in the possibility theory framework. For each classifier prediction, we build a possibility distribution assessing how likely the classifier prediction is correct using frequentist probabilities estimated on the validation set. The possibility distributions are aggregated using an adaptive t-norm that can accommodate dependency and poor accuracy of the classifier predictions. We prove that the proposed approach possesses a number of desirable classifier combination robustness properties

A geometric and game-theoretic study of the conjunction of possibility measures

In this paper, we study the conjunction of possibility measures when they are interpreted as coherent upper probabilities, that is, as upper bounds for some set of probability measures. We identify conditions under which the minimum of two possibility measures remains a possibility measure. We provide graphical way to check these conditions, by means of a zero-sum game formulation of the problem. This also gives us a nice way to adjust the initial possibility measures so their minimum is guaranteed to be a possibility measure. Finally, we identify conditions under which the minimum of two possibility measures is a coherent upper probability, or in other words, conditions under which the minimum of two possibility measures is an exact upper bound for the intersection of the credal sets of those two possibility measures

Other uncertainty theories based on capacities

International audienceThe two main uncertainty representations in the literature that tolerate imprecision are possibility distributions and random disjunctive sets. This chapter devotes special attention to the theories that have emerged from them. The first part of the chapter discusses epistemic logic and derives the need for capturing imprecision in information representations. It bridges the gap between uncertainty theories and epistemic logic showing that imprecise probabilities subsume modalities of possibility and necessity as much as probability. The second part presents possibility and evidence theories, their origins, assumptions and semantics, discusses the connections between them and the general framework of imprecise probability. Finally, chapter points out the remaining discrepancies between the different theories regarding various basic notions, such as conditioning, independence or information fusion and the existing bridges between them

Low rank surrogates for polymorphic fields with application to fuzzy-stochastic partial differential equations

We consider a general form of fuzzy-stochastic PDEs depending on the interaction of probabilistic and non-probabilistic ("possibilistic") influences. Such a combined modelling of aleatoric and epistemic uncertainties for instance can be applied beneficially in an engineering context for real-world applications, where probabilistic modelling and expert knowledge has to be accounted for. We examine existence and well-definedness of polymorphic PDEs in appropriate function spaces. The fuzzy-stochastic dependence is described in a high-dimensional parameter space, thus easily leading to an exponential complexity in practical computations. To aleviate this severe obstacle in practise, a compressed low-rank approximation of the problem formulation and the solution is derived. This is based on the Hierarchical Tucker format which is constructed with solution samples by a non-intrusive tensor reconstruction algorithm. The performance of the proposed model order reduction approach is demonstrated with two examples. One of these is the ubiquitous groundwater flow model with Karhunen-Loeve coefficient field which is generalized by a fuzzy correlation length