28,098 research outputs found
Stochastic Constraint Programming
To model combinatorial decision problems involving uncertainty and
probability, we introduce stochastic constraint programming. Stochastic
constraint programs contain both decision variables (which we can set) and
stochastic variables (which follow a probability distribution). They combine
together the best features of traditional constraint satisfaction, stochastic
integer programming, and stochastic satisfiability. We give a semantics for
stochastic constraint programs, and propose a number of complete algorithms and
approximation procedures. Finally, we discuss a number of extensions of
stochastic constraint programming to relax various assumptions like the
independence between stochastic variables, and compare with other approaches
for decision making under uncertainty.Comment: Proceedings of the 15th Eureopean Conference on Artificial
Intelligenc
Lower Complexity Bounds for Lifted Inference
One of the big challenges in the development of probabilistic relational (or
probabilistic logical) modeling and learning frameworks is the design of
inference techniques that operate on the level of the abstract model
representation language, rather than on the level of ground, propositional
instances of the model. Numerous approaches for such "lifted inference"
techniques have been proposed. While it has been demonstrated that these
techniques will lead to significantly more efficient inference on some specific
models, there are only very recent and still quite restricted results that show
the feasibility of lifted inference on certain syntactically defined classes of
models. Lower complexity bounds that imply some limitations for the feasibility
of lifted inference on more expressive model classes were established early on
in (Jaeger 2000). However, it is not immediate that these results also apply to
the type of modeling languages that currently receive the most attention, i.e.,
weighted, quantifier-free formulas. In this paper we extend these earlier
results, and show that under the assumption that NETIME =/= ETIME, there is no
polynomial lifted inference algorithm for knowledge bases of weighted,
quantifier- and function-free formulas. Further strengthening earlier results,
this is also shown to hold for approximate inference, and for knowledge bases
not containing the equality predicate.Comment: To appear in Theory and Practice of Logic Programming (TPLP
Structurally Tractable Uncertain Data
Many data management applications must deal with data which is uncertain,
incomplete, or noisy. However, on existing uncertain data representations, we
cannot tractably perform the important query evaluation tasks of determining
query possibility, certainty, or probability: these problems are hard on
arbitrary uncertain input instances. We thus ask whether we could restrict the
structure of uncertain data so as to guarantee the tractability of exact query
evaluation. We present our tractability results for tree and tree-like
uncertain data, and a vision for probabilistic rule reasoning. We also study
uncertainty about order, proposing a suitable representation, and study
uncertain data conditioned by additional observations.Comment: 11 pages, 1 figure, 1 table. To appear in SIGMOD/PODS PhD Symposium
201
- …