UNIT I PROBABILISTIC REASONING I

Acting under uncertainty – Bayesian inference – naïve bayes models-

Probabilistic reasoning – Bayesian networks – exact inference in BN –
approximate inference in BN -causal networks

Uncertainty:
Till now, we have learned knowledge representation using first-order logic and
propositional logic with certainty, which means we were sure about the predicates. With
this knowledge representation, we might write A→B, which means if A is true then B is
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:
Following are some leading causes of uncertainty to occur in the real world.

1. Information occurred from unreliable sources.

2. Experimental Errors
3. Equipment fault
4. Temperature variation
5. Climate change.

Bayesian inference

Bayesian inference is a specific way to learn from data that is heavily used in statistics for
data analysis. Bayesian inference is used less often in the field of machine learning, but it
offers an elegant framework to understand what “learning” actually is. It is generally useful to
know about Bayesian inference.

Example:
Suppose you think that a coin is biased. It has a mean (μ) bias of around 0.6 with a
standard deviation of 0.1. As more and more flips are made, and new data is observed,
our beliefs get updated. This is the real power of Bayesian Inference

Bayesian inference is a method of statistical inference in which Bayes' theorem is used

to update the probability for a hypothesis as more evidence or information becomes
available. Bayesian inference is an important technique in statistics, and especially in
mathematical statistics.

Naïve Bayes Models:

The Naive Bayes Classifier comes in the field of supervised learning and it’s a classification
algorithm in the development of fast machine learning models that can make accurate
predictions. It’s a probabilistic classifier, therefore it bases its predictions on the likelihood that
an object will be found. The Naive Bayes Algorithm is commonly used for text classification,
spam filtration, and sentiment analysis.
Bayes Theorem
The Bayes’ Theorem is a simple formula that can be used to
calculate conditional probabilities.
conditional probability — A measure of the possibility of an event occurring if another
event has already occurred is called conditional probability (by assumption,
presumption, assertion, or evidence).

Posterior probability (P(A|B)): is the probability of hypothesis A on the observed event B.

Likelihood probability P(B|A): stands for Likelihood, which is the probability of the
evidence provided that a hypothesis’ probability is true.
Prior Probability (P(A)): is the probability of a hypothesis before seeing the evidence.
Marginal Probability P(B): stands for Probability of Evidence Marginal Probability.
Example:
Let’s say we have an email dataset of and a target variable called “Spam” and “not
spam”. So, using this dataset, we must select whether a mail can be spam or not spam.
Convert the given dataset into frequency tables.
1. Find the probability of given features to generate a Likelihood table.
2. Calculate the posterior probability using Bayes’ theorem.
Example: Working of Naïve Bayes' Classifier can be understood with the help of the below
example:

Suppose we have a dataset of weather conditions and corresponding target variable

"Play". So using this dataset we need to decide that whether we should play or not on a
particular day according to the weather conditions. So to solve this problem, we need to
follow the below steps:

1. Convert the given dataset into frequency tables.

2. Generate Likelihood table by finding the probabilities of given features.
3. Now, use Bayes theorem to calculate the posterior probability.
Problem: If the weather is sunny, then the Player should play or not?

Solution: To solve this, first consider the below dataset:

Frequency table for the Weather Conditions:

Likelihood table weather condition:

Weathe Yes No
r

Overca 5 0
st

Rainy 2 2

Sunny 3 2

Total 10 5

We No Yes
ath
er

Ove 0 5 5/14
rcas =
t 0.35

Rai 2 2 4/14
ny =0.2
9

Sun 2 3 5/14
ny =0.3
 5

All 4/14 10/14

=0.2 =0.71
9

Outlook Play

0 Rainy Yes

1 Sunny Yes

2 Overcast Yes

3 Overcast Yes

4 Sunny No

5 Rainy Yes

6 Sunny Yes

7 Overcast Yes

8 Rainy No

9 Sunny No

10 Sunny Yes
 11 Rainy No

12 Overcast Yes

13 Overcast Yes

Applying Bayes'theorem:

P(Yes|Sunny)= P(Sunny|Yes)*P(Yes)/P(Sunny)

P(Sunny|Yes)= 3/10= 0.3

P(Sunny)= 0.35

P(Yes)=0.71

So P(Yes|Sunny) = 0.3*0.71/0.35= 0.60

P(No|Sunny)= P(Sunny|No)*P(No)/P(Sunny)

P(Sunny|NO)= 2/4=0.5

P(No)= 0.29

P(Sunny)= 0.35

So P(No|Sunny)= 0.5*0.29/0.35 = 0.41

So as we can see from the above calculation that P(Yes|Sunny)>P(No|Sunny)

Hence on a Sunny day, Player can play the game.

Types of Naive Bayes Model

We have 3 types of model in Naive Bayes
Gaussian
The Gaussian model presume a normally distributed distribution of attributes. If
predictors use continuous values rather than discrete values, the model assumes that
continuous values are taken from a Gaussian distribution.

Multinomial
The Multinomial Nave Bayes classifier is used when the data is multinomial distributed.
It is mostly employed to address issues with document classification, such as figuring
out which category a document falls into, such as Sports, Politics, or Education.

Bernoulli
With the exception that the predictor variables in the Bernoulli classifier are
independent Boolean variables, it is similar to the Multinomial classifier. For instance,
check to see if a word is used in a document. This paradigm is well-known for tasks
involving document categorization.

Advantages of Naive Bayes Classifier:

 A quick and straightforward machine learning strategy for predicting a class of
datasets is nave bayes.
 It outperforms the other algorithms when making predictions for several classes.
 It is the most often used solution for text categorization issues.

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Advantages of Naïve Bayes Classifier:

Naïve Bayes is one of the fast and easy ML algorithms to predict a class of datasets.

It can be used for Binary as well as Multi-class Classifications.

It performs well in Multi-class predictions as compared to the other Algorithms.

It is the most popular choice for text classification problems.

Disadvantages of Naïve Bayes Classifier:

Naive Bayes assumes that all features are independent or unrelated, so it cannot learn
the relationship between features.

Applications of Naïve Bayes Classifier:

It is used for Credit Scoring.

It is used in medical data classification.

It can be used in real-time predictions because Naïve Bayes Classifier is an eager learner.

It is used in Text classification such as Spam filtering and Sentiment analysis.

Probabilistic reasoning:
Probabilistic reasoning is a way of knowledge representation where we apply the
concept of probability to indicate the uncertainty in knowledge. In probabilistic
reasoning, we combine probability theory with logic to handle the uncertainty.

We use probability in probabilistic reasoning because it provides a way to handle the

uncertainty that is the result of someone's laziness and ignorance.

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:

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

In probabilistic reasoning, there are two ways to solve problems with uncertain
knowledge:

o Bayes' rule
o Bayesian Statistics

Note: We will learn the above two rules in later chapters.

As probabilistic reasoning uses probability and related terms, so before understanding

probabilistic reasoning, let's understand some common terms:

Probability: Probability can be defined as a chance that an uncertain event will occur. It

is the numerical measure of the likelihood that an event will occur. The value of
probability always remains between 0 and 1 that represent ideal uncertainties.

1. 0 ≤ P(A) ≤ 1,   where P(A) is the probability of an event A.  
1. P(A) = 0,  indicates total uncertainty in an event A.   
1. P(A) =1, indicates total certainty in an event A.    

We can find the probability of an uncertain event by using the below formula.

o P(¬A) = probability of a not happening event.

o P(¬A) + P(A) = 1.

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.

Conditional probability:
Conditional probability 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:

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:

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

B is an event that a student likes English.

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

Bayes' theorem:
Bayes' theorem is also known as Bayes' rule, Bayes' law, or Bayesian reasoning, which
determines the probability of an event with uncertain knowledge.

In probability theory, it relates the conditional probability and marginal probabilities of

two random events.

Bayes' theorem 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).

Bayes' theorem allows updating the probability prediction of an event by observing new
information of the real world.

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:

1. P(A ⋀ B)= P(A|B) P(B) or  
 Similarly, the probability of event B with known event A:

1. P(A ⋀ B)= P(B|A) P(A)  

Equating right hand side of both the equations, we will get:

The above equation (a) is called as Bayes' rule or Bayes' theorem. This equation is
basic of most modern AI systems for probabilistic inference.

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 (a), in general, we can write P (B) = P(A)*P(B|Ai), hence the Bayes' rule
can be written as:

Where A1, A2, A3,........, An is a set of mutually exclusive and exhaustive events.

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:
Example-1:

Question: 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:

o The Known probability that a patient has meningitis disease is 1/30,000.

o 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

Hence, we can assume that 1 patient out of 750 patients has meningitis disease with a
stiff neck.

Example-2:

Question: 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(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

Putting all values in equation (i) we will get:

Application of Bayes' theorem in Artificial intelligence:

Following are some applications of Bayes' theorem:

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

Bayesian Belief Network in artificial intelligence

Bayesian belief network is key computer technology for dealing with probabilistic events
and to solve a problem which has uncertainty. We can define a Bayesian network as:

"A Bayesian network 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 network, belief network, decision network, or 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.

Real world applications are probabilistic in nature, and to represent the relationship
between multiple events, we need a Bayesian network. It can also be used in various
tasks including prediction, anomaly detection, diagnostics, automated insight,
reasoning, time series prediction, and decision making under uncertainty.

Bayesian Network can be used for building models from data and experts opinions, and
it consists of two parts:

o Directed Acyclic Graph

o 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.

A Bayesian network graph is made up of nodes and Arcs (directed links), where:

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

be continuous or discrete.
o 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.

o In the above diagram, A, B, C, and D are random variables represented by

the nodes of the network graph.
o 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.
o Node C is independent of node A.
Note: The Bayesian network graph does not contain any cyclic graph. Hence, it is
known as a directed acyclic graph or DAG.

The Bayesian network has mainly two components:

o Causal Component
o 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.

Bayesian network is based on Joint probability distribution and conditional probability.

So let's first understand the joint probability distribution:

Joint probability distribution:

If we have variables x1, x2, x3,....., xn, then the probabilities of a different combination of
x1, x2, x3.. xn, are known as Joint probability distribution.

P[x1, x2, x3,....., xn], it can be written as the following way in terms of the joint probability
distribution.

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

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

In general for each variable Xi, we can write the equation as:

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

Explanation of Bayesian network:

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:

o The Bayesian network for the above problem is given below. 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.
o 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.
o The conditional distributions for each node are given as conditional probabilities
table or CPT.
o 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.
o In CPT, a boolean variable with k boolean parents contains 2 K probabilities.
Hence, if there are two parents, then CPT will contain 4 probability values

List of all events occurring in this network:

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

We can write the events of problem statement in the form 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]

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.

We can provide the conditional probabilities as per the below tables:

Conditional probability table for Alarm A:

The Conditional probability of Alarm A depends on Burglar and earthquake:

 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

Conditional probability table for David Calls:

The Conditional probability of David that he will call depends on the probability of
Alarm.

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

True 0.91 0.09

False 0.05 0.95

Conditional probability table for Sophia Calls:

The Conditional probability of Sophia that she calls is depending on its Parent Node
"Alarm."

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

True 0.75 0.25

False 0.02 0.98

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).

= 0.75* 0.91* 0.001* 0.998*0.999 = 0.00068045

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

The semantics of Bayesian Network:

There are two ways to understand the semantics of the Bayesian network, which is given
below:

1. To understand the network as the representation of the Joint probability

distribution.

It is helpful to understand how to construct the network.

2. To understand the network as an encoding of a collection of conditional

independence statements.

It is helpful in designing inference procedure.