Ploxoma: Testbed for Uncertain Inference

Abstract

This paper compares two formalisms for uncertain inference, Kyburg’s Combinatorial Semantics and Dempster-Shafer belief function theory, on the basis of an example from the domain of medical diagnosis. I review Shafer’s example about the imaginary disease ploxoma and show how it would be represented in Combinatorial Semantics. I conclude that belief function theory has a qualitative advantage because it offers greater flexibility of expression, and provides results about more specific classes of patients. Nevertheless, a quantitative comparison reveals that the inferences sanctioned by Combinatorial Semantics are more reliable than those of belief function theory.

Cite

Text

Blau. "Ploxoma: Testbed for Uncertain Inference." Pre-proceedings of the Fifth International Workshop on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics, 1995.

Markdown

[Blau. "Ploxoma: Testbed for Uncertain Inference." Pre-proceedings of the Fifth International Workshop on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics, 1995.](https://mlanthology.org/aistats/1995/blau1995aistats-ploxoma/)

BibTeX

@inproceedings{blau1995aistats-ploxoma,
  title     = {{Ploxoma: Testbed for Uncertain Inference}},
  author    = {Blau, Hannah},
  booktitle = {Pre-proceedings of the Fifth International Workshop on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics},
  year      = {1995},
  pages     = {49-55},
  volume    = {R0},
  url       = {https://mlanthology.org/aistats/1995/blau1995aistats-ploxoma/}
}