Probabilistic Reasoning in Intelligent Systems

Preface

This book is the culmination of an investigation into the applicability of probabilistic methods to tasks requiring automated reasoning under uncertainty. The result is a computation-mided interpretation of probability theory, an interpretation that exposes the qualitative nature of this ceturies-old formalism, its solid epistemological foundation, its compatibility with human intuition and, most importantly, its amenibility to network representations and to parallel and distributed computation. From this vantage point I have attempted to provide a coherent account of probability as a language for reasoning with partial beliefs and bind it, in a unifying perspective, with other artificial intelligence (AI) approaches to uncertainty, ...