Uncertainty

Paula Matuszek
CSC 8520, Fall, 2005
Introduction
 The world is not a well-defined place.
 There is uncertainty in the facts we know:
 What’s the temperature? Imprecise measures
 Is Bush a good president? Imprecise definitions
 Where is the pit? Imprecise knowledge
 There is uncertainty in our inferences
 If I have a blistery, itchy rash and was gardening all
weekend I probably have poison ivy
 People make successful decisions all the time
anyhow.
Artificial Intellignce, Fall 2005, Paula Matuszek
Based in part on www.csc.calpoly.edu/~fkurfess/Courses/CSC-481/W02/Slides/Uncertainty.ppt and www.cs.umbc.edu/courses/graduate/671/fall05/slides/c18_prob.ppt 2
Sources of Uncertainty
 Uncertain data
 missing data, unreliable, ambiguous, imprecise representation,
inconsistent, subjective, derived from defaults, noisy…
 Uncertain knowledge
 Multiple causes lead to multiple effects
 Incomplete knowledge of causality in the domain
 Probabilistic/stochastic effects
 Uncertain knowledge representation
 restricted model of the real system
 limited expressiveness of the representation mechanism
 inference process
 Derived result is formally correct, but wrong in the real world
 New conclusions are not well-founded (eg, inductive reasoning)
 Incomplete, default reasoning methods
Artificial Intellignce, Fall 2005, Paula Matuszek
Based in part on www.csc.calpoly.edu/~fkurfess/Courses/CSC-481/W02/Slides/Uncertainty.ppt and www.cs.umbc.edu/courses/graduate/671/fall05/slides/c18_prob.ppt 3
Reasoning Under Uncertainty
 So how do we do reasoning under uncertainty
and with inexact knowledge?
 heuristics
 ways to mimic heuristic knowledge processing methods
used by experts
 empirical associations
 experientialreasoning
 based on limited observations

 probabilities
 objective (frequency counting)
 subjective (human experience )

Artificial Intellignce, Fall 2005, Paula Matuszek

Based in part on www.csc.calpoly.edu/~fkurfess/Courses/CSC-481/W02/Slides/Uncertainty.ppt and www.cs.umbc.edu/courses/graduate/671/fall05/slides/c18_prob.ppt 4
Decision making with uncertainty
 Rational behavior:
 For each possible action, identify the possible
outcomes
 Compute the probability of each outcome
 Compute the utility of each outcome
 Compute the probability-weighted (expected) utility
over possible outcomes for each action
 Select the action with the highest expected utility
(principle of Maximum Expected Utility)

Artificial Intellignce, Fall 2005, Paula Matuszek

Based in part on www.csc.calpoly.edu/~fkurfess/Courses/CSC-481/W02/Slides/Uncertainty.ppt and www.cs.umbc.edu/courses/graduate/671/fall05/slides/c18_prob.ppt 5
Some Relevant Factors
 expressiveness
 can concepts used by humans be represented adequately?
 can the confidence of experts in their decisions be expressed?
 comprehensibility
 representation of uncertainty
 utilization in reasoning methods
 correctness
 probabilities
 relevance ranking
 long inference chains
 computational complexity
 feasibility of calculations for practical purposes
 reproducibility
 will observations deliver the same results when repeated?

Artificial Intellignce, Fall 2005, Paula Matuszek

Based in part on www.csc.calpoly.edu/~fkurfess/Courses/CSC-481/W02/Slides/Uncertainty.ppt and www.cs.umbc.edu/courses/graduate/671/fall05/slides/c18_prob.ppt 6
Basics of Probability Theory
 mathematical approach for processing uncertain
information
 sample space set
X = {x1, x2, …, xn}
 collection of all possible events
 can be discrete or continuous
 probability number P(xi): likelihood of an event xi to occur
 non-negative value in [0,1]
 total probability of the sample space is 1
 for mutually exclusive events, the probability for at least one of
them is the sum of their individual probabilities
 experimental probability
 based on the frequency of events
 subjective probability
 based on expert assessment
Artificial Intellignce, Fall 2005, Paula Matuszek
Based in part on www.csc.calpoly.edu/~fkurfess/Courses/CSC-481/W02/Slides/Uncertainty.ppt and www.cs.umbc.edu/courses/graduate/671/fall05/slides/c18_prob.ppt 7
Compound Probabilities
 describes independent events
 do not affect each other in any way
 joint probability of two independent events A and B
P(A  B) = P(A) * P (B)
 union probability of two independent events A and
B
P(A  B) = P(A) + P(B) - P(A  B)
=P(A) + P(B) - P(A) * P (B)

Artificial Intellignce, Fall 2005, Paula Matuszek

Based in part on www.csc.calpoly.edu/~fkurfess/Courses/CSC-481/W02/Slides/Uncertainty.ppt and www.cs.umbc.edu/courses/graduate/671/fall05/slides/c18_prob.ppt 8
Probability theory
 Random variables  Alarm, Burglary, Earthquake
 Domain  Boolean (like these), discrete,
continuous
 Atomic event: complete
 Alarm=True  Burglary=True
specification of state
 Earthquake=False
alarm  burglary  earthquake
 Prior probability: degree
of belief without any other  P(Burglary) = .1
evidence
 Joint probability: matrix  P(Alarm, Burglary) =
of combined probabilities alarm ¬alarm
of a set of variables
burglary .09 .01
¬burglary .1 .8
Artificial Intellignce, Fall 2005, Paula Matuszek
Based in part on www.csc.calpoly.edu/~fkurfess/Courses/CSC-481/W02/Slides/Uncertainty.ppt and www.cs.umbc.edu/courses/graduate/671/fall05/slides/c18_prob.ppt 9
Probability theory (cont.)
 Conditional probability:  P(burglary | alarm) = .47
probability of effect given P(alarm | burglary) = .9
causes  P(burglary | alarm) =
 Computing conditional P(burglary  alarm) / P(alarm)
probs: = .09 / .19 = .47
 P(a | b) = P(a  b) / P(b)  P(burglary  alarm) =
 P(b): normalizing constant P(burglary | alarm) P(alarm) =
 Product rule: .47 * .19 = .09
 P(a  b) = P(a | b) P(b)  P(alarm) =
P(alarm  burglary) +
 Marginalizing:
P(alarm  ¬burglary) =
 P(B) = ΣaP(B, a)
.09+.1 = .19
 P(B) = ΣaP(B | a) P(a)
(conditioning)

Artificial Intellignce, Fall 2005, Paula Matuszek

Based in part on www.csc.calpoly.edu/~fkurfess/Courses/CSC-481/W02/Slides/Uncertainty.ppt and www.cs.umbc.edu/courses/graduate/671/fall05/slides/c18_prob.ppt 10
 Independence
 When two sets of propositions do not affect each others’
probabilities, we call them independent, and can easily compute
their joint and conditional probability:
 Independent (A, B) if P(A  B) = P(A) P(B), P(A | B) = P(A)
 For example, {moon-phase, light-level} might be independent of
{burglary, alarm, earthquake}
 Then again, it might not: Burglars might be more likely to
burglarize houses when there’s a new moon (and hence little
light)
 But if we know the light level, the moon phase doesn’t affect
whether we are burglarized
 Once we’re burglarized, light level doesn’t affect whether the
alarm goes off
 We need a more complex notion of independence, and methods
for reasoning about these kinds of relationships

Artificial Intellignce, Fall 2005, Paula Matuszek

Based in part on www.csc.calpoly.edu/~fkurfess/Courses/CSC-481/W02/Slides/Uncertainty.ppt and www.cs.umbc.edu/courses/graduate/671/fall05/slides/c18_prob.ppt 11
Exercise: Independence
p(smart  smart smart
study 
prep) study study study study

prepared .432 .16 .084 .008

prepared .048 .16 .036 .072

 Queries:
 Is smart independent of study?
 Is prepared independent of study?

Artificial Intellignce, Fall 2005, Paula Matuszek

Based in part on www.csc.calpoly.edu/~fkurfess/Courses/CSC-481/W02/Slides/Uncertainty.ppt and www.cs.umbc.edu/courses/graduate/671/fall05/slides/c18_prob.ppt 12
Conditional independence
Absolute independence:
 A and B are independent if P(A  B) = P(A) P(B);
equivalently, P(A) = P(A | B) and P(B) = P(B | A)
A and B are conditionally independent given C if
 P(A  B | C) = P(A | C) P(B | C)

This lets us decompose the joint distribution:

 P(A  B  C) = P(A | C) P(B | C) P(C)

Moon-Phase and Burglary are conditionally

independent given Light-Level
Conditional independence is weaker than absolute
independence, but still useful in decomposing the full
joint probability distribution

Artificial Intellignce, Fall 2005, Paula Matuszek

Based in part on www.csc.calpoly.edu/~fkurfess/Courses/CSC-481/W02/Slides/Uncertainty.ppt and www.cs.umbc.edu/courses/graduate/671/fall05/slides/c18_prob.ppt 13
Exercise: Conditional independence
smart smart
p(smart 
study  prep) study study study study

prepared .432 .16 .084 .008

prepared .048 .16 .036 .072

 Queries:
 Is smart conditionally independent of
prepared, given study?
 Is study conditionally independent of
prepared, given smart?
Artificial Intellignce, Fall 2005, Paula Matuszek
Based in part on www.csc.calpoly.edu/~fkurfess/Courses/CSC-481/W02/Slides/Uncertainty.ppt and www.cs.umbc.edu/courses/graduate/671/fall05/slides/c18_prob.ppt 14
Conditional Probabilities
 describes dependent events
 affect each other in some way
 conditional probability of event a given that event
B has already occurred
P(A|B) = P(A  B) / P(B)

Artificial Intellignce, Fall 2005, Paula Matuszek

Based in part on www.csc.calpoly.edu/~fkurfess/Courses/CSC-481/W02/Slides/Uncertainty.ppt and www.cs.umbc.edu/courses/graduate/671/fall05/slides/c18_prob.ppt 15
Bayesian Approaches
 derive the probability of an event given another event
 Often useful for diagnosis:
 If X are (observed) effects and Y are (hidden) causes,
 We may have a model for how causes lead to effects (P(X | Y))
 We may also have prior beliefs (based on experience) about
the frequency of occurrence of effects (P(Y))
 Which allows us to reason abductively from effects to causes
(P(Y | X)).
 has gained importance recently due to advances in
efficiency
 more computational power available
 better methods
Artificial Intellignce, Fall 2005, Paula Matuszek
Based in part on www.csc.calpoly.edu/~fkurfess/Courses/CSC-481/W02/Slides/Uncertainty.ppt and www.cs.umbc.edu/courses/graduate/671/fall05/slides/c18_prob.ppt 16
Bayes’ Rule for Single Event
 single hypothesis H, single event E
P(H|E) = (P(E|H) * P(H)) / P(E)
or
 P(H|E) = (P(E|H) * P(H) /
(P(E|H) * P(H) + P(E|H) * P(H) )

Artificial Intellignce, Fall 2005, Paula Matuszek

Based in part on www.csc.calpoly.edu/~fkurfess/Courses/CSC-481/W02/Slides/Uncertainty.ppt and www.cs.umbc.edu/courses/graduate/671/fall05/slides/c18_prob.ppt 17
Bayes Example: Diagnosing Meningitis
 Suppose we know that
 Stiff neck is a symptom in 50% of meningitis cases
 Meningitis (m) occurs in 1/50,000 patients
 Stiff neck (s) occurs in 1/20 patients
 Then
 P(s|m) = 0.5, P(m) = 1/50000, P(s) = 1/20
 P(m|s) = (P(s|m) P(m))/P(s)
= (0.5 x 1/50000) / 1/20 = .0002
 So we expect that one in 5000 patients with a stiff
neck to have meningitis.

Artificial Intellignce, Fall 2005, Paula Matuszek

Based in part on www.csc.calpoly.edu/~fkurfess/Courses/CSC-481/W02/Slides/Uncertainty.ppt and www.cs.umbc.edu/courses/graduate/671/fall05/slides/c18_prob.ppt 18
Advantages and Problems Of Bayesian
Reasoning
 advantages
 sound theoretical foundation
 well-defined semantics for decision making

 problems
 requires large amounts of probability data
 sufficient sample sizes
 subjective evidence may not be reliable
 independence of evidences assumption often not valid
 relationship between hypothesis and evidence is reduced to a
number
 explanations for the user difficult
 high computational overhead

Artificial Intellignce, Fall 2005, Paula Matuszek

Based in part on www.csc.calpoly.edu/~fkurfess/Courses/CSC-481/W02/Slides/Uncertainty.ppt and www.cs.umbc.edu/courses/graduate/671/fall05/slides/c18_prob.ppt 19
Some Issues with Probabilities
 Often don't have the data
 Just don't have enough observations
 Data can't readily be reduced to numbers or frequencies.

 Human estimates of probabilities are notoriously

inaccurate. In particular, often add up to >1.
 Doesn't always match human reasoning well.
 P(x) = 1 - P(-x). Having a stiff neck is strong (.9998!) evidence
that you don't have meningitis. True, but counterintuitive.

 Several other approaches for uncertainty address some of

these problems.

Artificial Intellignce, Fall 2005, Paula Matuszek

Based in part on www.csc.calpoly.edu/~fkurfess/Courses/CSC-481/W02/Slides/Uncertainty.ppt and www.cs.umbc.edu/courses/graduate/671/fall05/slides/c18_prob.ppt 20
Dempster-Shafer Theory
 mathematical theory of evidence
 Notations
 Environment T: set of objects that are of interest
 frame of discernment FD
 power set of the set of possible elements
 mass probability function m
 assigns a value from [0,1] to every item in the frame of
discernment
 mass probability m(A)
 portion of the total mass probability that is assigned to
an element A of FD
Artificial Intellignce, Fall 2005, Paula Matuszek
Based in part on www.csc.calpoly.edu/~fkurfess/Courses/CSC-481/W02/Slides/Uncertainty.ppt and www.cs.umbc.edu/courses/graduate/671/fall05/slides/c18_prob.ppt 21
D-S Underlying concept
 The most basic problem with uncertainty is often with the
axiom that P(X) +P(not X) = 1
 If the probability that you have poison ivy when you have a
rash is .3, this means that a rash is strongly suggestive (.7)
that you don’t have poison ivy.
 True, in a sense, but neither intuitive nor helpful.
 What you really mean is that the probability is .3 that you
have poison ivy and .7 that we don’t know yet what you
have.
 So we initially assign all of the probability to the total set
of things you might have: the frame of discernment.

Artificial Intellignce, Fall 2005, Paula Matuszek

Based in part on www.csc.calpoly.edu/~fkurfess/Courses/CSC-481/W02/Slides/Uncertainty.ppt and www.cs.umbc.edu/courses/graduate/671/fall05/slides/c18_prob.ppt 22
Belief and Certainty
 belief Bel(A) in a subset A
 sum of the mass probabilities of all the proper
subsets of A
 likelihood that one of its members is the conclusion
 plausibility Pls(A)
 maximum belief of A, upper bound
 1 – Bel(not A)
 certainty Cer(A)
 interval [Bel(A), Pls(A)]
 expresses the range of belief
Artificial Intellignce, Fall 2005, Paula Matuszek
Based in part on www.csc.calpoly.edu/~fkurfess/Courses/CSC-481/W02/Slides/Uncertainty.ppt and www.cs.umbc.edu/courses/graduate/671/fall05/slides/c18_prob.ppt 23
Example: Bel, Pls
Frame of Discernment:
Mentally retarded (MR), Learning disabled (LD), Not Eligible (NE)
{MR, LD, NE} m=0, Bel=1

{MR, LD} {MR, NE} {LD, NE}

m=.3, Bel=.6 m=.2, Bel = .4 m=.1, Bel=.4

(MR} {LD} {NE}

m=.1, Bel=.1 m=.2, Bel=.2 m=.1, Bel=.1

{empty set}
m=0, Bel=0
Artificial Intellignce, Fall 2005, Paula Matuszek
Based in part on www.csc.calpoly.edu/~fkurfess/Courses/CSC-481/W02/Slides/Uncertainty.ppt and www.cs.umbc.edu/courses/graduate/671/fall05/slides/c18_prob.ppt 24
Interpretation: Some Evidential
Intervals
 Completely true: [1,1]
 Completely false: [0,0]
 Completely ignorant: [0,1]
 Doubt -- disbelief in X: Dbt = Bel( not X)
 Ignorance -- range of uncertainty: Igr =Pls-Bel
 Tends to support: [Bel, 1] (0<Bel<1)
 Tends to refute: [0, Pls] (0>Pls<1)
 Tends to both support and refute: [Bel, Pls]
(0<Bel<Pls<1)

Artificial Intellignce, Fall 2005, Paula Matuszek

Based in part on www.csc.calpoly.edu/~fkurfess/Courses/CSC-481/W02/Slides/Uncertainty.ppt and www.cs.umbc.edu/courses/graduate/671/fall05/slides/c18_prob.ppt 25
Advantages and Problems of
Dempster-Shafer
 advantages
 clear, rigorous foundation
 ability to express confidence through intervals
 certainty about certainty
 problems
 non-intuitive determination of mass probability
 very high computational overhead
 may produce counterintuitive results due to
normalization when probabilities are combined
 Still hard to get numbers
Artificial Intellignce, Fall 2005, Paula Matuszek
Based in part on www.csc.calpoly.edu/~fkurfess/Courses/CSC-481/W02/Slides/Uncertainty.ppt and www.cs.umbc.edu/courses/graduate/671/fall05/slides/c18_prob.ppt 26
Certainty Factors
 shares some foundations with Dempster-Shafer
theory, but more practical
 denotes the belief in a hypothesis H given that
some pieces of evidence are observed
 no statements about the belief is no evidence is
present
 in contrast to Bayes’ method

Artificial Intellignce, Fall 2005, Paula Matuszek

Based in part on www.csc.calpoly.edu/~fkurfess/Courses/CSC-481/W02/Slides/Uncertainty.ppt and www.cs.umbc.edu/courses/graduate/671/fall05/slides/c18_prob.ppt 27
Belief and Disbelief
 measure of belief
 degree to which hypothesis H is supported by
evidence E
 MB(H,E) = 1 IF P(H) =1
(P(H|E) - P(H)) / (1- P(H)) otherwise
 measure of disbelief
 degree to which doubt in hypothesis H is supported
by evidence E
 MB(H,E) = 1 IF P(H) =0
(P(H) - P(H|E)) / P(H)) otherwise

Artificial Intellignce, Fall 2005, Paula Matuszek

Based in part on www.csc.calpoly.edu/~fkurfess/Courses/CSC-481/W02/Slides/Uncertainty.ppt and www.cs.umbc.edu/courses/graduate/671/fall05/slides/c18_prob.ppt 28
Certainty Factor
 certainty factor CF
 ranges between -1 (denial of the hypothesis H) and
1 (confirmation of H)
 CF = (MB - MD) / (1 - min (MD, MB))
 combining antecedent evidence
 use of premises with less than absolute confidence
 E1  E2 = min(CF(H, E1), CF(H, E2))
 E1  E2 = max(CF(H, E1), CF(H, E2))

 E =  CF(H, E)

Artificial Intellignce, Fall 2005, Paula Matuszek

Based in part on www.csc.calpoly.edu/~fkurfess/Courses/CSC-481/W02/Slides/Uncertainty.ppt and www.cs.umbc.edu/courses/graduate/671/fall05/slides/c18_prob.ppt 29
Combining Certainty Factors
 certainty factors that support the same conclusion
 several rules can lead to the same conclusion
 applied incrementally as new evidence becomes
available

 Cfrev(CFold, CFnew) =
 CFold + CFnew(1 - CFold) if both > 0
 CFold + CFnew(1 + CFold) if both < 0
 CFold + CFnew / (1 - min(|CFold|, |CFnew|)) if one
<0
Artificial Intellignce, Fall 2005, Paula Matuszek
Based in part on www.csc.calpoly.edu/~fkurfess/Courses/CSC-481/W02/Slides/Uncertainty.ppt and www.cs.umbc.edu/courses/graduate/671/fall05/slides/c18_prob.ppt 30
Advantages of Certainty Factors
Advantages
 simple implementation
 reasonable modeling of human experts’ belief
expression of belief and disbelief
 successful applications for certain problem
classes
 evidence relatively easy to gather
no statistical base required

Artificial Intellignce, Fall 2005, Paula Matuszek

Based in part on www.csc.calpoly.edu/~fkurfess/Courses/CSC-481/W02/Slides/Uncertainty.ppt and www.cs.umbc.edu/courses/graduate/671/fall05/slides/c18_prob.ppt 31
Problems of Certainty Factors
 Problems
 partially ad hoc approach
 theoretical foundation through Dempster-Shafer
theory was developed later
 combination of non-independent evidence
unsatisfactory
 new knowledge may require changes in the certainty
factors of existing knowledge
 certainty factors can become the opposite of
conditional probabilities for certain cases
 not suitable for long inference chains
Artificial Intellignce, Fall 2005, Paula Matuszek
Based in part on www.csc.calpoly.edu/~fkurfess/Courses/CSC-481/W02/Slides/Uncertainty.ppt and www.cs.umbc.edu/courses/graduate/671/fall05/slides/c18_prob.ppt 32
Fuzzy Logic
 approach to a formal treatment of uncertainty
 relies on quantifying and reasoning through
natural (or at least non-mathematical) language
 Rejects the underlying concept of an excluded
middle: things have a degree of membership in a
concept or set
 Are you tall?
 Are you rich?
 As long as we have a way to formally describe
degree of membership and a way to combine
degrees of memberships, we can reason.
Artificial Intellignce, Fall 2005, Paula Matuszek
Based in part on www.csc.calpoly.edu/~fkurfess/Courses/CSC-481/W02/Slides/Uncertainty.ppt and www.cs.umbc.edu/courses/graduate/671/fall05/slides/c18_prob.ppt 33
Fuzzy Set
 categorization of elements xi into a set S
 described through a membership function m(s)
 associates each element xi with a degree of
membership in S
 possibility measure Poss{xS}
 degree to which an individual element x is a potential
member in the fuzzy set S
 combination of multiple premises
 Poss(A  B) = min(Poss(A),Poss(B))
 Poss(A  B) = max(Poss(A),Poss(B))

Artificial Intellignce, Fall 2005, Paula Matuszek

Based in part on www.csc.calpoly.edu/~fkurfess/Courses/CSC-481/W02/Slides/Uncertainty.ppt and www.cs.umbc.edu/courses/graduate/671/fall05/slides/c18_prob.ppt 34
Fuzzy Set Example
membership
short medium tall
1

0.5

height
0 (cm)
0 50 100 150
Artificial Intellignce, Fall 2005, Paula Matuszek
200
Based in part on www.csc.calpoly.edu/~fkurfess/Courses/CSC-481/W02/Slides/Uncertainty.ppt and www.cs.umbc.edu/courses/graduate/671/fall05/slides/c18_prob.ppt 250 35
Fuzzy vs. Crisp Set
membership
short medium tall
1

0.5

height
0 (cm)
0 50 100 150
Artificial Intellignce, Fall 2005, Paula Matuszek
200
Based in part on www.csc.calpoly.edu/~fkurfess/Courses/CSC-481/W02/Slides/Uncertainty.ppt and www.cs.umbc.edu/courses/graduate/671/fall05/slides/c18_prob.ppt 250 36
Fuzzy Reasoning
 In order to implement a fuzzy reasoning system
you need
 For each variable, a defined set of values for
membership
 Can be numeric (1 to 10)
 Can be linguistic
 really no, no, maybe, yes, really yes
 tiny, small, medium, large, gigantic
 good, okay, bad
 And you need a set of rules for combining them
 Good and bad = okay.

Artificial Intellignce, Fall 2005, Paula Matuszek

Based in part on www.csc.calpoly.edu/~fkurfess/Courses/CSC-481/W02/Slides/Uncertainty.ppt and www.cs.umbc.edu/courses/graduate/671/fall05/slides/c18_prob.ppt 37
Fuzzy Inference Methods
 Lots of ways to combine evidence across rules
 Poss(B|A) = min(1, (1 - Poss(A)+ Poss(B)))
 implication according to Max-Min inference
 also Max-Product inference and other rules
 formal foundation through Lukasiewicz logic
 extension of binary logic to infinite-valued logic
 Can be enumerated or calculated.

Artificial Intellignce, Fall 2005, Paula Matuszek

Based in part on www.csc.calpoly.edu/~fkurfess/Courses/CSC-481/W02/Slides/Uncertainty.ppt and www.cs.umbc.edu/courses/graduate/671/fall05/slides/c18_prob.ppt 38
Some Additional Fuzzy Concepts
 Support set: all elements with membership > 0
 Alpha-cut set: all elements with membership
greater than alpha
 Height: maximum grade of membership
 Normalized: height = 1
Some typical domains
 Control (subways, camera focus)
 Pattern Recognition (OCR, video stabilization)
 Inference (diagnosis, planning, NLP)
Artificial Intellignce, Fall 2005, Paula Matuszek
Based in part on www.csc.calpoly.edu/~fkurfess/Courses/CSC-481/W02/Slides/Uncertainty.ppt and www.cs.umbc.edu/courses/graduate/671/fall05/slides/c18_prob.ppt 39
Advantages and Problems of Fuzzy
Logic
 advantages
 general theory of uncertainty
 wide applicability, many practical applications
 natural use of vague and imprecise concepts
 helpful for commonsense reasoning, explanation
 problems
 membership functions can be difficult to find
 multiple ways for combining evidence
 problems with long inference chains

Artificial Intellignce, Fall 2005, Paula Matuszek

Based in part on www.csc.calpoly.edu/~fkurfess/Courses/CSC-481/W02/Slides/Uncertainty.ppt and www.cs.umbc.edu/courses/graduate/671/fall05/slides/c18_prob.ppt 40
Uncertainty: Conclusions
 In AI we must often represent and reason about uncertain
information
 This is no different from what people do all the time!
 There are multiple approaches to handling uncertainty.
 Probabilistic methods are most rigorous but often hard to
apply; Bayesian reasoning and Dempster-Shafer extend it
to handle problems of independence and ignorance of data
 Fuzzy logic provides an alternate approach which better
supports ill-defined or non-numeric domains.
 Empirically, it is often the case that the main need is some
way of expressing "maybe". Any system which provides for
at least a three-valued logic tends to yield the same
decisions.
Artificial Intellignce, Fall 2005, Paula Matuszek
Based in part on www.csc.calpoly.edu/~fkurfess/Courses/CSC-481/W02/Slides/Uncertainty.ppt and www.cs.umbc.edu/courses/graduate/671/fall05/slides/c18_prob.ppt 41