Knowledge Discovery for Query Formulation for Validation of a Bayesian Belief Network

This paper proposes machine learning techniques to discover knowledge in a dataset in the form of if-then rules for the purpose of formulating queries for validation of a Bayesian belief network model of the same data. Although domain expertise is often available, the query formulation task is tedious and laborious, and hence automation of query formulation is desirable. In an effort to automate the query formulation process, a machine learning algorithm is leveraged to discover knowledge in the form of if-then rules in the data from which the Bayesian belief network model under validation was also induced. The set of if-then rules are processed and filtered through domain expertise to identify a subset that consists of “interesting” and “significant” rules. The subset of interesting and significant rules is formulated into corresponding queries to be posed, for validation purposes, to the Bayesian belief network induced from the same dataset. The promise of the proposed methodology was assessed through an empirical study performed on a real-life dataset, the National Crime Victimization Survey, which has over 250 attributes and well over 200,000 data points. The study demonstrated that the proposed approach is feasible and provides automation, in part, of the query formulation process for validation of a complex probabilistic model, which culminates in substantial savings for the need for human expert involvement and investment.