Computing expectations with continuous p-boxes: Univariate case

  • Authors:

  • Lev Utkin;Sebastien Destercke

  • Affiliations:

  • St. Petersburgh Forest Technical Academy, Department of Computer Science, Institutski per. 5, 194021 St. Petersburgh, Russia;CIRAD, UMR IATE, Campus Montpellier SupAgro 2, Place Pierre Viala, 34060 Montpellier, France

  • Venue:
  • International Journal of Approximate Reasoning
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

Given an imprecise probabilistic model over a continuous space, computing lower/upper expectations is often computationally hard to achieve, even in simple cases. Because expectations are essential in decision making and risk analysis, tractable methods to compute them are crucial in many applications involving imprecise probabilistic models. We concentrate on p-boxes (a simple and popular model), and on the computation of lower expectations of non-monotone functions. This paper is devoted to the univariate case, that is where only one variable has uncertainty. We propose and compare two approaches: the first using general linear programming, and the second using the fact that p-boxes are special cases of random sets. We underline the complementarity of both approaches, as well as the differences.