Credal Nets with Probabilities Estimated with an Extreme Imprecise Dirichlet Model

The propagation of probabilities in credal networks when probabilities are estimated with a global imprecise Dirichlet model is an important open problem. Only Zaffalon [21] has proposed an algorithm for the Naive classifier. The main difficulty is that, in general, computing upper and lower probability intervals implies the resolution of an optimization of a fraction of two polynomials. In the case of the Naive credal classifier, Zaffalon has shown that the function is a convex function of only one parameter, but there is not a similar result for general credal sets. In this paper, we propose the use of an imprecise global model, but we restrict the distributions to only the most extreme ones. The result is a model giving rise that in the case of estimating a conditional probability under independence relationships, it can produce smaller intervals than the global general model. Its main advantage is that the optimization problem is simpler, and available procedures can be directly applied, as the ones proposed in [7].

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