Acquisition of Causal Models for Local Distributions in Bayesian Networks

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Date

2014

Authors

Xiang, Yang
Truong, Minh

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Publisher

IEEE

Abstract

To specify a Bayesian network, a local distribution in the form of a conditional probability table, often of an effect conditioned on its n causes, needs to be acquired, one for each non-root node. Since the number of parameters to be assessed is generally exponential in n, improving the efficiency is an important concern in knowledge engineering. Non-impeding noisy-AND (NIN-AND) tree causal models reduce the number of parameters to being linear inn, while explicitly expressing both reinforcing and undermining interactions among causes. The key challenge in NIN-AND tree modeling is the acquisition of the NIN-AND tree structure. In this work, we formulate a concise structure representation and an expressive causal interaction function of NIN-AND trees. Building on these representations, we propose two structural acquisition methods, which are applicable to both elicitation-based and machine learning-based acquisitions. Their accuracy is demonstrated through experimental evaluations.

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Keywords

Bayesian networks, Local distributions, Causal independence, Knowledge acquisition, Elicitation, Graphical models, Noisy-OR models, Causal modeling, NIN-AND trees

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