Defining explanation in probabilistic systems

  • Authors:
  • Urszula Chajewska;Joseph Y. Halpern

  • Affiliations:
  • Stsnford University, Depamnent of Computer Science, Stanford, CA;Cornell University, Computer Science Department, Ithaca, NY

  • Venue:
  • UAI'97 Proceedings of the Thirteenth conference on Uncertainty in artificial intelligence
  • Year:
  • 1997

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Abstract

As probabilistic systems gain popularity and are coming into wider use, the need for a mechanism that explains the system's findings and recommendations becomes more critical. The system will also need a mechanism for ordering competing explanations. We examine two representative approaches to explanation in the literature-- one due to Gärdenfors and one due to Pearl--and show that both suffer from significant problems. We propose an approach to defining a notion of "better explanation" that combines some of the features of both together with more recent work by Pearl and others on causality.