CSE3013 - "Artificial Intelligence"

Uncertainity and Knowledge Reasoning

Dr. Pradeep K V
Assistant Professor (Sr.)
School of Computer Science and Engineering
VIT - Chennai

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Introduction

What is Uncertainty?
It is a state of
Doubt about the future or
About what is the right thing to do.

Examples :
A doctor does not know exactly what is going on inside a patient.
A teacher does not know exactly what a student understands,
A robot does not know what is in a room it left a few minutes ago.
A period of Politician
The way of life in the coastal region.

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Uncertainty Knowledge Representation

We used FOL and Propositional logic to represent the knowledge with

confidence(certainty), thus we were assured of the predicates.

Example: Given A → B, which means that if A is true, then B must be true.

But consider a situation where we are not sure about whether A is true or not
then we cannot express this statement, this situation is called uncertainty.

So to represent uncertain knowledge, where we are not sure about the

predicates, we need uncertain reasoning or probabilistic reasoning.

Causes of uncertainty :
Information occurred from unreliable sources.
Experimental Errors or Equipment fault
Temperature variation or Climate change.

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CSE3013 - "Artificial Intelligence"
Probabilistic reasoning

Dr. Pradeep K V
Assistant Professor (Sr.)
School of Computer Science and Engineering
VIT - Chennai

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Probabilistic Reasoning I

It is a way of representing the knowledge, where we apply the concept of

probability to indicate the uncertainty in knowledge.
Here, we combine probability theory with logic to handle the uncertainty.

In the real world, there are lots of scenarios, where the certainty of something is
not confirmed, such as :
"It will rain today"
"Behavior of someone for some situations"
"A match between two teams or two players."
These are probable sentences for which we can assume that it will happen but
not sure about it, so here we use probabilistic reasoning.

Need of Probabilistic reasoning in AI:

When there are unpredictable outcomes.
When specifications or possibilities of predicates becomes too large to
handle.
When an unknown error occurs during an experiment.

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Probabilistic Reasoning II

In PR, There are two ways to solve problems with uncertain knowledge:
Bayes’ rule
Bayesian Statistics

Probability?
It is a chance that an uncertain event will occur.
It is measured numerically (0 or 1) of the likelihood that an event will occur.

- 1. 0 ≤ P(A) ≤ 1, where P(A) is the probability of an event A.

- 2. P(A) = 0, indicates total uncertainty in an event A. ( P(¬A) ).

- 3. P(A) = 1, indicates total certainty in an event A.

- From 2 and 3 : P(A) + P(¬A) = 0

We can find the probability of an uncertain event by using the below formula.
Number _of _Desired_Outcomes
Probability _of _Occurance =
Total_Number _of _Outcomes

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Common Terms

Event : Each possible outcome of a variable is called an event.

Sample space: The collection of all possible events is called sample space.
Random variables: Random variables are used to represent the events and
objects in the real world.
Prior probability: The prior probability of an event is probability
computed before observing new information.
Posterior Probability: The probability that is calculated after all evidence
or information has taken into account. It is a combination of prior
probability and new information.

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Conditional probability I

It is a probability of occurring an event when another event has already

happened.

Let’s suppose, we want to calculate the event ’A’ when event ’B’ has already
occurred, "the probability of A under the conditions of B", it can be written as:

P(A ∧ B)
P(A|B) =
P(B)

Where P(A ∧ B)= Joint probability of A and B

P(B)= Marginal probability of B.

If the probability of ’A’ is given and we need to find the probability of B, then
it will be given as:
P(A ∧ B)
P(B|A) =
P(A)

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Conditional probability II

It can be explained by using the below Venn diagram, where B is occurred event, so
sample space will be reduced to set B, and now we can only calculate event A when
event B is already occurred by dividing the probability of P(A ∧ B) by P(B).

Example : In a class, there are 70% of the students who like English and 40% of the
students who likes English and mathematics, and then what is the percent of students
those who like English also like mathematics?

Solution : Let, A is an event that a student likes Mathematics and B is an event that
a student likes English.
P(A ∧ B) 0.4
P(A|B) = = = 57%
P(B) 0.7

Hence, 57% are the students who like English also like Mathematics.
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Bayes’ theorem

It is also known as Bayes’ rule, Bayes’ law, or Bayesian reasoning, which

determines the probability of an event with uncertain knowledge.
It relates the conditional and marginal probabilities of 2 random events.
It was named after the British mathematician Thomas Bayes. The
Bayesian inference is an application of Bayes’ theorem, which is
fundamental to Bayesian statistics.
It is a way to calculate the value of P(B|A) with the knowledge of
P(A|B).
It allows updating the probability prediction of an event by observing new
information of the real world.

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Bayes’ theorem I

Example: If cancer corresponds to one’s age then by using Bayes’ theorem, we

can determine the probability of cancer more accurately with the help of age.

Bayes’ theorem can be derived using product rule and conditional probability of
event A with known event B:

As from product rule we can write: Similarly, the probability of event B

with known event A
P(A ∧ B) = P(A|B)P(B) (1) P(A ∧ B) = P(B|A)P(A) (2)
Equating right hand side of both the equations, we will get:
P(B|A), P(A)
P(A ∧ A) = (3)
P(B)
The above equation (3) is called as Bayes’ rule or Bayes’ theorem. This
equation is basic of most modern AI systems for probabilistic inference.

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Bayes’ theorem II

It shows the simple relationship between joint and conditional probabilities.

Here,
P(A|B) is known as posterior, which we need to calculate, and it will be
read as Probability of hypothesis A when we have occurred an evidence B.
P(B|A) is called the likelihood, in which we consider that hypothesis is
true, then we calculate the probability of evidence.
P(A) is called the prior probability, probability of hypothesis before
considering the evidence
P(B) is called marginal probability, pure probability of an evidence.
In the equation (1), in general, we can write P(B) = P(A) ∗ P(B|Ai ), hence
the Bayes’ rule can be written as:
P(Ai ∗ P(B|Ai ))
P(Ai |B) = Pk (4)
i=1
P(Ai ) ∗ P(B|Ai )
Where A1 , A2 , A3 , ........, An is a set of mutually exclusive and exhaustive events.

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Applying Bayes’ Rule

Bayes’ rule allows us to compute the single term P(B|A) in terms of

P(A|B), P(B), and P(A).
This is very useful in cases where we have a good probability of these
three terms and want to determine the fourth one.
Suppose we want to perceive the effect of some unknown cause, and want
to compute that cause, then the Bayes’ rule becomes:
P(effect|cause), P(cause)
P(cause|effect) =
P(effect)

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Examples-1

What is the probability that a patient has diseases meningitis with a stiff neck?

Given Data:

A doctor is aware that disease meningitis causes a patient to have a stiff neck,
and it occurs 80% of the time. He is also aware of some more facts, which are
given as follows:
The Known probability that a patient has meningitis disease is 1/30,000.
The Known probability that a patient has a stiff neck is 2%.

Let a be the proposition that patient has stiff neck and b be the proposition
that patient has meningitis. , so we can calculate the following as:

P(a|b) = 0.8
P(b) = 1/30000
P(a)= .02
1
P(a|b) ∗ P(b) 0.8 ∗ ( 30000 )
P(b|a) = = = 0.001333333
P(a) 0.02
Hence, we can assume that 1 patient out of 750 patients has meningitis disease
with a stiff neck.
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Example-2

From a standard deck of playing cards, a single card is drawn. The probability that the
card is king is 4/52, then calculate posterior probability P(King|Face), which means
the drawn face card is a king card.

Solution:
P(face|king) ∗ p(king)
P(king|face) = (1)
P(face)

P(king): probability that the card is King= 4/52= 1/13

P(face): probability that a card is a face card= 3/13
P(face|king): probability of face card when we assume it is a king = 1
1
1∗ 13 1
P(king|face) = 3
= (2)
13
3
is the probability that the face card is king card

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Applications

It is used to calculate the next step of the robot when the already
executed step is given.
Bayes’ theorem is helpful in weather forecasting.
It can solve the Monty Hall problem.

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Bayesian Belief Network

It is key computer technology for dealing with probabilistic events and to

solve a problem which has uncertainty.
"It is a probabilistic graphical model which represents a set of variables
and their conditional dependencies using a directed acyclic graph."
It is also called a Bayes/Belief/Decision/Bayesian model.
Bayesian networks are probabilistic, because these networks are built from
a probability distribution, and also use probability theory for prediction and
anomaly detection.
It can be used for building models from data and experts opinions, and it
consists of two parts:
Directed Acyclic Graph
Table of conditional probabilities.
The generalized form of Bayesian network that represents and solve
decision problems under uncertain knowledge is known as an Influence
diagram.

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Bayesian Network Graph I

It is made up of nodes and arcs (Directed Acyclic Graph)[DAG], where:

Each node corresponds to the random variables, and a variable can be

continuous or discrete.
Arc or directed arrows represent the causal relationship or conditional
probabilities between random variables. These directed links or arrows
connect the pair of nodes in the graph. These links represent that one
node directly influence the other node, and if there is no directed link that
means that nodes are independent with each other
In the above diagram, A, B, C, and D are random variables represented by
the nodes of the network graph.
If we are considering node B, which is connected with node A by a directed
arrow, then node A is called the parent of Node B.
Node C is independent of node A.

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Bayesian Network Graph II

The Bayesian network has mainly two components:

Causal Component
Actual numbers
Each node in the Bayesian network has condition probability distribution
P(Xi |Parent(Xi )), which determines the effect of the parent on that node.
It is based on Joint probability distribution and conditional probability.

Joint Probability Distribution: The probabilities of a different combination of

the variables x1 ,x2 ,x3 ......xn are known as the "joint probability distribution" if
we have those variables.

P[x1 ,x2 ,x3 ......xn ], can be written in terms of JPD as

= P[x1 |x2 ,x3 ......xn ]*P[x2 ,x3 ......xn ]

= P[x1 |x2 ,x3 ......xn ]P[x2 |x3 ......xn ]......P[xn−1 |xn ]

In General, For every Variable Xi , we can write the equation as :

P(Xi |Xi−1 ,........., X1 ) = P(Xi |Parents(Xi ))

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Explanation of Bayesian network I

Let’s understand the Bayesian network through an example by creating a

directed acyclic graph:

Example
Harry installed a new burglar alarm at his home to detect burglary. The alarm reliably
responds at detecting a burglary but also responds for minor earthquakes. Harry has
two neighbors David and Sophia, who have taken a responsibility to inform Harry at
work when they hear the alarm. David always calls Harry when he hears the alarm, but
sometimes he got confused with the phone ringing and calls at that time too. On the
other hand, Sophia likes to listen to high music, so sometimes she misses to hear the
alarm. Here we would like to compute the probability of Burglary Alarm.

Problem: Calculate the probability that alarm has sounded, but there is neither a
burglary, nor an earthquake occurred, and David and Sophia both called the Harry.

Solution:
The network structure is showing that burglary and earthquake is the
parent node of the alarm and directly affecting the probability of alarm’s
going off, but David and Sophia’s calls depend on alarm probability.

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Explanation of Bayesian network II

The network is representing that our assumptions do not directly perceive

the burglary and also do not notice the minor earthquake, and they also
not confer before calling.
The conditional distributions for each node are given as conditional
probabilities table or CPT.
Each row in the CPT must be sum to 1 because all the entries in the table
represent an exhaustive set of cases for the variable.
In CPT, a boolean variable with k boolean parents contains 2K
probabilities. Hence, if there are two parents, then CPT will contain 4
probability values

List of Events Occurred :

Burglary (B)
Earthquake(E)
Alarm(A)
David Calls(D)
Sophia calls(S)

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Explanation of Bayesian network III

Events in terms of Probability : P[D, S, A, B, E] can rewrite the above probability

statement using joint probability distribution:
P[D, S, A, B, E] = P[D | S, A, B, E]. P[S, A, B, E]
= P[D | S, A, B, E]. P[S | A, B, E]. P[A, B, E]
= P[D| A]. P [ S| A, B, E]. P[ A, B, E]
= P[D | A]. P[ S | A]. P[A| B, E]. P[B, E]
= P[D | A]. P[S | A]. P[A| B, E]. P[B |E]. P[E]

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Explanation of Bayesian network IV

Let’s take the observed probability for the Burglary and earthquake component:

P(B=True) = 0.002, which is the probability of burglary.

P(B=False) = 0.998, which is the probability of no burglary.
P(E=True) = 0.001, which is the probability of a minor earthquake.
P(E=False) = 0.999, Which is the probability that an earthquake not occurred.

Table: CPT for Alarm A Depends on ’B’ & ’E’

B E P(A=True) P(A=False)
True True 0.94 0.06
True False 0.95 0.04
False True 0.31 0.69
False False 0.001 0.999

Table: CPT for David Calls Depends on ’A’ Table: CPT for Sophia Calls Depends on ’A’

A P(D=True) P(D=False) A P(S=True) P(S=False)

True 0.91 0.09 True 0.75 0.25
False 0.05 0.95 False 0.02 0.98

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Explanation of Bayesian network V

From the formula of joint distribution, we can write the problem statement in
the form of probability distribution:

P(S, D, A, ¬B, ¬E) = P (S|A) * P(D|A) * P(A|¬B ∧ ¬E) * P(¬B) * P(¬E).

P(S, D, A, ¬B, ¬E) = 0.75 ∗ 0.91 ∗ 0.001 ∗ 0.998 ∗ 0.999
P(S, D, A, ¬B, ¬E) = 0.00068045

Hence, a Bayesian network can answer any query about the domain by using
Joint distribution.

The semantics of Bayesian Network:

To understand the network as the representation of the Joint
probability distribution. (It is helpful to understand how to construct the
network.)
To understand the network as an encoding of a collection of
conditional independence statements. (It is helpful in designing
inference procedure)

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