From the Publisher:
Probabilistic Reasoning in Intelligent Systems is a complete andaccessible account of the theoretical foundations and computational methods that underlie plausible reasoning under uncertainty. The author provides a coherent explication of probability as a language for reasoning with partial belief and offers a unifying perspective on other AI approaches to uncertainty, such as the Dempster-Shafer formalism, truth maintenance systems, and nonmonotonic logic. The author distinguishes syntactic and semantic approaches to uncertaintyand offers techniques, based on belief networks, that provide a mechanism for making semantics-based systems operational. Specifically, network-propagation techniques serve as a mechanism for combining the theoretical coherence of probability theory with modern demands of reasoning-systems technology: modular declarative inputs, conceptually meaningful inferences, and parallel distributed computation. Application areas include diagnosis, forecasting, image interpretation, multi-sensor fusion, decision support systems, plan recognition, planning, speech recognitionin short, almost every task requiring that conclusions be drawn from uncertain clues and incomplete information.
Probabilistic Reasoning in Intelligent Systems will be of special interest to scholars and researchers in AI, decision theory, statistics, logic, philosophy, cognitive psychology, and the management sciences. Professionals in the areas of knowledge-based systems, operations research, engineering, and statistics will find theoretical and computational tools of immediate practical use. The book can also be used as an excellent text for graduate-level courses in AI, operations research, or applied probability.

Probabilistic Reasoning in Intelligent Systems: Networks of Plausible Inference

The architecture and learning procedure underlying ANFIS (adaptive-network-based fuzzy inference system) is presented, which is a fuzzy inference system implemented in the framework of adaptive networks. By using a hybrid learning procedure, the proposed ANFIS can construct an input-output mapping based on both human knowledge (in the form of fuzzy if-then rules) and stipulated input-output data pairs. In the simulation, the ANFIS architecture is employed to model nonlinear functions, identify nonlinear components on-line in a control system, and predict a chaotic time series, all yielding remarkable results. Comparisons with artificial neural networks and earlier work on fuzzy modeling are listed and discussed. Other extensions of the proposed ANFIS and promising applications to automatic control and signal processing are also suggested. >

ANFIS: adaptive-network-based fuzzy inference system

Machine Learning is the study of methods for programming computers to learn. Computers are applied to a wide range of tasks, and for most of these it is relatively easy for programmers to design and implement the necessary software. However, there are many tasks for which this is difficult or impossible. These can be divided into four general categories. First, there are problems for which there exist no human experts. For example, in modern automated manufacturing facilities, there is a need to predict machine failures before they occur by analyzing sensor readings. Because the machines are new, there are no human experts who can be interviewed by a programmer to provide the knowledge necessary to build a computer system. A machine learning system can study recorded data and subsequent machine failures and learn prediction rules. Second, there are problems where human experts exist, but where they are unable to explain their expertise. This is the case in many perceptual tasks, such as speech recognition, hand-writing recognition, and natural language understanding. Virtually all humans exhibit expert-level abilities on these tasks, but none of them can describe the detailed steps that they follow as they perform them. Fortunately, humans can provide machines with examples of the inputs and correct outputs for these tasks, so machine learning algorithms can learn to map the inputs to the outputs. Third, there are problems where phenomena are changing rapidly. In finance, for example, people would like to predict the future behavior of the stock market, of consumer purchases, or of exchange rates. These behaviors change frequently, so that even if a programmer could construct a good predictive computer program, it would need to be rewritten frequently. A learning program can relieve the programmer of this burden by constantly modifying and tuning a set of learned prediction rules. Fourth, there are applications that need to be customized for each computer user separately. Consider, for example, a program to filter unwanted electronic mail messages. Different users will need different filters. It is unreasonable to expect each user to program his or her own rules, and it is infeasible to provide every user with a software engineer to keep the rules up-to-date. A machine learning system can learn which mail messages the user rejects and maintain the filtering rules automatically. Machine learning addresses many of the same research questions as the fields of statistics, data mining, and psychology, but with differences of emphasis. Statistics focuses on understanding the phenomena that have generated the data, often with the goal of testing different hypotheses about those phenomena. Data mining seeks to find patterns in the data that are understandable by people. Psychological studies of human learning aspire to understand the mechanisms underlying the various learning behaviors exhibited by people (concept learning, skill acquisition, strategy change, etc.).

Machine learning

Data Mining Practical Machine Learning Tools and Techniques

Fuzzy Set Theory - And Its Applications, Third Edition is a textbook for courses in fuzzy set theory. It can also be used as an introduction to the subject. The character of a textbook is balanced with the dynamic nature of the research in the field by including many useful references to develop a deeper understanding among interested readers. The book updates the research agenda (which has witnessed profound and startling advances since its inception some 30 years ago) with chapters on possibility theory, fuzzy logic and approximate reasoning, expert systems, fuzzy control, fuzzy data analysis, decision making and fuzzy set models in operations research. All chapters have been updated. Exercises are included.

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Fuzzy Set Theory - and Its Applications

This paper proposes a general approach to diagnosis based on fuzzy pattern matching, making use of consistency and inclusion-based indices in the setting of possibility theory. The approach was first developed for binary attributes and single faults. It was then generalized to any kind of attributes (including multidimensional ones). The paper presents a refined representation (where a distinction is made between effects that are possible for sure and effects that are just not impossible, and where information about (ab)normal values is used). Moreover, an extension to multiple-fault diagnosis and to "cascading faults" is outlined.

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Twofold fuzzy sets in single and multiple fault diagnosis, using information about normal values

Fuzzy sets and possibility theory offer a unified framework where both preferences and uncertainty can be modelled. Indeed fuzzy sets can be used for describing weakly ordered sets of more or less acceptable/preferred situations, and possibility distributions represent states of information pervaded with imprecision and uncertainty. This framework relies on purely ordinal scales both for preferences and for uncertainty, due to the use of max and min operations and of an order-reversing operation for manipulating the levels of these two scales.

Towards Possibilistic Decision Theory

Many studies on machine learning, and more specifically on regression, focus on the search for a precise model, when precise data are available. Therefore, it is well-known that the model thus found may not exactly describe the target concept, due to the existence of learning bias. In order to overcome the problem of too much illusionary precise models, this paper provides a general framework for imprecise regression from non-fuzzy input and output data. The goal of imprecise regression is to find a model that has the better tradeoff between faithfulness w.r.t. data and (meaningful) precision. We propose an algorithm based on simulated annealing for linear and non-linear imprecise regression with triangular and trapezoidal fuzzy sets. This approach is compared with the different fuzzy regression frameworks, especially with possibilistic regression. Experiments on an environmental database show promising results.

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A general framework for imprecise regression

We suppose that all we know about the preferences of an agent, is given by a (small) collection of relative preferences between choices represented by their evaluations on a set of criteria. Taking lesson from the success of the use of analogical proportions for predicting the class of a new item from a set of classified examples, we explore the possibility of using analogical proportions for completing a set of relative preferences. Such an approach is also motivated by a striking similarity between the formal structure of the axiomatic characterization of weighted averages and the logical definition of an analogical proportion. This paper discusses how to apply an analogical proportion-based approach to the learning of relative preferences, assuming that the preferences are representable by a weighted average, and how to validate experimental results. The approach is illustrated by examples.

Completing Preferences by Means of Analogical Proportions

Case-based reasoning usually exploits source cases (consisting of a source problem and its solution) individually, on the basis of the similarity between the target problem and a particular source problem. This corresponds to approximation. Then the solution of the source case has to be adapted to the target. We advocate in this paper that it is also worthwhile to consider source cases by two, or by three. Handling cases by two allows for a form of interpolation, when the target problem is between two similar source problems. When cases come by three, it offers a basis for extrapolation. Namely the solution of the target problem is obtained, when possible, as the fourth term of an analogical proportion linking the three source cases with the target, where the analogical proportion handles both similarity and dissimilarity between cases. Experiments show that interpolation and extrapolation techniques are of interest for reusing cases, either in an independent or in a combined way.

Henri Prade

Papers

Twofold fuzzy sets in single and multiple fault diagnosis, using information about normal values

Towards Possibilistic Decision Theory

A general framework for imprecise regression

Completing Preferences by Means of Analogical Proportions

Making the Best of Cases by Approximation, Interpolation and Extrapolation