
Chapter 8
Decision Analysis
In general, the information obtained by doing inference in a Bayesian network
can be used to arrive at a decision, even though the Bayesian net work itself
does not recommend a decision. In this chapter, we extend the structure of a
Bayesian network s o that the network actually does recommend a decision. Such
a network is called an influence diagram. Section 8.1 introduces decision trees,
which are mathematically equivalent to influence diagrams, but whic h have dif-
ficulty representing large instances because their size grows exponentially with
the number of variables. In Section 8.2 we discuss influence diagrams, whose
size ...