Practical Issues in Constructing a Bayes' Belief Network

Understand

Bayes belief networks and influence diagrams are tools for constructing coherent probabilistic representations of uncertain knowledge.

• The process of constructing such a network to represent an expert's knowledge is used to illustrate a variety of techniques which can facilitate the process of structuring and quantifying uncertain relationships.
• These include some generalizations of the "noisy OR gate" concept.
• Sensitivity analysis of generic elements of Bayes' networks provides insight into when rough probability assessments are sufficient and when greater precision may be important.