ion Modulation In many cases, it may be more useful to do normative inference on a model that is deemed to be complete at a particular level of abstraction than it is to do an approximate or heuristic analysis of a model that is too large to be analyzed under specific resource constraints. It may prove useful in many cases to store several belief-network representations, each containing propositions at different levels of abstraction. In many domains, models at higher levels of abstraction are more tractable. As the time available for computation decreases, network modules of increasing abstraction can be employed. ffl Local Reformulation Local reformulation is the modification of specific troublesome topologies in a belief network. Approximation methods and heuristics designed to modify the microstructure of belief networks will undoubtedly be useful in the tractable solution of large uncertain-reasoning problems. Such strategies might be best applied at knowledge-encoding time. An...

Despite their different perspectives, artificial intelligence (AI) and the disciplines of decision science have common roots and strive for similar goals. This paper surveys the potential for addressing problems in representation, inference, knowledge engineering, and explanation within the decision-theoretic framework. Recent analyses of the restrictions of several traditional AI reasoning techniques, coupled with the development of more tractable and expressive decisiontheoretic representation and inference strategies, have stimulated renewed interest in decision theory and decision analysis. We describe early experience with simple probabilistic schemes for automated reasoning, review the dominant expert-system paradigm, and survey some recent research at the crossroads of AI and decision science. In particular, we present the belief network and influence diagram representations. Finally, we discuss issues that have not been studied in detail within the expert-systems sett...

We address practical issues concerning the construction and use of decision-theoretic or normative expert systems for diagnosis. In particular, we examine Pathfinder, a normative expert system that assists surgical pathologists with the diagnosis of lymphnode diseases, and discuss the representation of dependencies among pieces of evidence within this system. We describe the belief network, a graphical representation of probabilistic dependencies. We see how Pathfinder uses a belief network to construct differential diagnoses efficiently, even when there are dependencies among pieces of evidence. In addition, we introduce an extension of the belief-network representation called a similarity network, a tool for constructing large and complex belief networks. The representation allows a user to construct independent belief networks for subsets of a given domain. A valid belief network for the entire domain can then be constructed from the individual belief networks. We also introduce the partition, a graphical representation that facilitates the assessment of probabilities associated with a belief network. Finally, we show that the similarity-network and partition representations made practical the construction of Pathfinder.

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