Foundations of Building Intelligent Artifacts: Chapter 6

Chapter 6
Uncertainty and principles of probability

Objectives

After this chapter you should be able to

Name reasons for uncertainty and explain their consequences,
State and exemplify the basic properties of a probability function, random variables, and expectation,
Explain the decision tree method,
Discuss two different approaches to probability,
Discuss and exemplify the randomness of a sequence,
Discuss and exemplify the principle of Occam's razor,
Discuss and exemplify the principle of indifference.

Key words:	Soft computing, uncertainty, probability function, random variable, decision tree, expectation, long term frequency, belief, randomness, minimal program length, Occam's razor, principle of indifference

Supplementary material

Principles of reasoning under uncertainty
Occam's razor
Minimum message length encoding
The Berkeley Initiative in Soft Computing

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