The author distinguishes syntactic and semantic approaches to uncertainty-and offers techniques, based on belief networks, that provide a mechanism for making semantics-based systems operational. Specifically, network-propagation techniques serve as a mechanism for combining the theoretical coherence of probability theory with modern demands of reasoning-systems technology: modular declarative inputs, conceptually meaningful inferences, and parallel distributed computation. Application areas include diagnosis, forecasting, image interpretation, multi-sensor fusion, decision support systems, plan recognition, planning, speech recognition-in short, almost every task requiring that conclusions be drawn from uncertain clues and incomplete information. .eText ISBN: 9781558604797
