{"id":341225,"date":"2016-12-26T09:41:31","date_gmt":"2016-12-26T17:41:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/?post_type=msr-research-item&p=341225"},"modified":"2023-11-13T08:48:21","modified_gmt":"2023-11-13T16:48:21","slug":"approximate-inference-infinite-contingent-bayesian-networks","status":"publish","type":"msr-research-item","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/publication\/approximate-inference-infinite-contingent-bayesian-networks\/","title":{"rendered":"Approximate Inference for Infinite Contingent Bayesian Networks"},"content":{"rendered":"

In many practical problems \u2014 from tracking aircraft based on radar data to building a bibliographic database based on citation lists \u2014 we want to reason about an unbounded number of unseen objects with unknown relations among them. Bayesian networks, which define a fixed dependency structure on a finite set of variables, are not the ideal representation language for this task. This paper introduces contingent Bayesian networks<\/em> (CBNs), which represent uncertainty about dependencies by labeling each edge with a condition under which it is active. A CBN may contain cycles and have infinitely many variables. Nevertheless, we give general conditions under which such a CBN defines a unique joint distribution over its variables. We also present a likelihood weighting algorithm that performs approximate inference in finite time per sampling step on any CBN that satisfies these conditions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In many practical problems \u2014 from tracking aircraft based on radar data to building a bibliographic database based on citation lists \u2014 we want to reason about an unbounded number of unseen objects with unknown relations among them. Bayesian networks, which define a fixed dependency structure on a finite set of variables, are not the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"msr-url-field":"","msr-podcast-episode":"","msrModifiedDate":"","msrModifiedDateEnabled":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_classifai_error":"","footnotes":""},"msr-content-type":[3],"msr-research-highlight":[],"research-area":[13556],"msr-publication-type":[193716],"msr-product-type":[],"msr-focus-area":[],"msr-platform":[],"msr-download-source":[],"msr-locale":[268875],"msr-post-option":[],"msr-field-of-study":[],"msr-conference":[],"msr-journal":[],"msr-impact-theme":[],"msr-pillar":[],"class_list":["post-341225","msr-research-item","type-msr-research-item","status-publish","hentry","msr-research-area-artificial-intelligence","msr-locale-en_us"],"msr_publishername":"","msr_edition":"","msr_affiliation":"","msr_published_date":"2005-1-1","msr_host":"","msr_duration":"","msr_version":"","msr_speaker":"","msr_other_contributors":"","msr_booktitle":"","msr_pages_string":"","msr_chapter":"","msr_isbn":"","msr_journal":"","msr_volume":"","msr_number":"","msr_editors":"","msr_series":"","msr_issue":"","msr_organization":"","msr_how_published":"","msr_notes":"","msr_highlight_text":"","msr_release_tracker_id":"","msr_original_fields_of_study":"","msr_download_urls":"","msr_external_url":"","msr_secondary_video_url":"","msr_longbiography":"","msr_microsoftintellectualproperty":1,"msr_main_download":"341228","msr_publicationurl":"","msr_doi":"","msr_publication_uploader":[{"type":"file","viewUrl":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/aistats05-cbn.pdf","id":"341228","title":"aistats05-cbn","label_id":"243109","label":0}],"msr_related_uploader":"","msr_attachments":[],"msr-author-ordering":[{"type":"text","value":"Brian Milch","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"text","value":"Bhaskara Marthi","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"text","value":"David Sontag","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"text","value":"Stuart Russell","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"text","value":"Daniel L. 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