Abstract

bilities may not impair diagnostic performance significantly, and that simple binary representations may often be adequate. These findings of robustness suggest that belief networks are a practical representation without requiring undue precision. Probabilistic Reasoning, Bayesian Networks also Section on Medical Informatics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. also Engineering-Economic Systems, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. 1 The Tradeoff Between Accuracy and Cost sufficiently accurate 1.1 Experiments on Belief Networks Each knowledge representation or model is, by definition, a simplification of reality. When the representation is derived from a human expert, it is a simplification even of the expert's perception of reality. The question in choosing a representation is not whether the representation is completely accurate---it cannot be---but whether the model is for the purposes for which it is designed. This question is the one tha

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