Modeling biased information seeking with second order probability distributions

summary:Updating probabilities by information from only one hypothesis and thereby ignoring alternative hypotheses, is not only biased but leads to progressively imprecise conclusions. In psychology this phenomenon was studied in experiments with the “pseudodiagnosticity task”. In probability logic the phenomenon that additional premises increase the imprecision of a conclusion is known as “degradation”. The present contribution investigates degradation in the context of second order probability distributions. It uses beta distributions as marginals and copulae together with C-vines to represent dependence structures. It demonstrates that in Bayes' theorem the posterior distributions of the lower and upper probabilities approach 0 and 1 as more and more likelihoods belonging to only one hypothesis are included in the analysis

Propagating Imprecise Probabilities In Bayesian Networks

Often experts are incapable of providing `exact' probabilities; likewise, samples on which the probabilities in networks are based must often be small and preliminary. In such cases the probabilities in the networks are imprecise. The imprecision can be handled by second-order probability distributions. It is convenient to use beta or Dirichlet distributions to express the uncertainty about probabilities. The problem of how to propagate point probabilities in a Bayesian network now is transformed into the problem of how to propagate Dirichlet distributions in Bayesian networks. It is shown that the propagation of Dirichlet distributions in Bayesian networks with incomplete data results in a system of probability mixtures of beta-binomial and Dirichlet distributions. Approximate first order probabilities and their second order probability density functions are be obtained by stochastic simulation. A number of properties of the propagation of imprecise probabilities are discuss..

Framing human inference by coherence based probability logic

We take coherence based probability logic as the basic reference theory to model human deductive reasoning. The conditional and probabilistic argument forms are explored. We give a brief overview of recent developments of combining logic and probability in psychology. A study on conditional inferences illustrates our approach. First steps towards a process model of conditional inferences conclude the paper. © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Abstract

Nonmonotonic conditionals (A | ∼ B) are formalizations of common sense expressions of the form “if A, normally B”. The nonmonotonic conditional is interpreted by a “high ” coherent conditional probability, P (B|A)>.5. Two important properties are closely related to the nonmonotonic conditional: First, A | ∼ B allows for exceptions. Second, the rules of the nonmonotonic system p guiding A | ∼ B allow for withdrawing conclusions in the light of new premises. This study reports a series of three experiments on reasoning with inference rules about nonmonotonic conditionals in the framework of coherence. We investigated the cut, and the right weakening rule of system p. As a critical condition, we investigated basic monotonic properties of classical (monotone) logic, namely monotonicity, transitivity, and contraposition. The results suggest that people reason nonmonotonically rather than monotonically. We propose nonmonotonic reasoning as a competence model of human reasoning.