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Title: Irrelevance and conditioning in first-order probabilistic logic

Conference ·
OSTI ID:430711
 [1];  [2]
  1. Computer Science Dept., Stanford, CA (United States)
  2. IBM Almaden Research Center, San Jose, CA (United States)

First-order probabilistic logic is a powerful knowledge representation language. Unfortunately, deductive reasoning based on the standard semantics for this logic does not support certain desirable patterns of reasoning, such as indifference to irrelevant information or substitution of constants into universal rules. We show that both these patterns rely on a first-order version of probabilistic independence, and provide semantic conditions to capture them. The resulting insight enables us to understand the effect of conditioning on independence, and allows us to describe a procedure for determining when independencies are preserved under conditioning. We apply this procedure in the context of a sound and powerful inference algorithm for reasoning from statistical knowledge bases.

OSTI ID:
430711
Report Number(s):
CONF-960876-; TRN: 96:006521-0086
Resource Relation:
Conference: 13. National conference on artifical intelligence and the 8. Innovative applications of artificial intelligence conference, Portland, OR (United States), 4-8 Aug 1996; Other Information: PBD: 1996; Related Information: Is Part Of Proceedings of the thirteenth national conference on artificial intelligence and the eighth innovative applications of artificial intelligence conference. Volume 1 and 2; PB: 1626 p.
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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