Reasoning in evidential networks with conditional belief functions

AbstractIn the existing evidential networks applicable to belief functions, the relations among the variables are always represented by joint belief functions on the product space of the variables involved. In this paper, we use conditional belief functions to represent such relations in the network and show some relations between these two kinds of representations. We also present a propagation algorithm for such networks. By analyzing the properties of some special networks with conditional belief functions, called networks with partial dependency, we show that the computation for reasoning can be simplified

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