Possibilistic networks parameter learning: Preliminary empirical comparison

Like Bayesian networks, possibilistic ones compactly encode joint uncertainty representations over a set of variables. Learning possibilistic networks from data in general and from imperfect or scarce data in particular, has not received enough attention. Indeed, only few works deal with learning the structure and the parameters of a possibilistic network from a dataset. This paper provides a preliminary comparative empirical evaluation of two approaches for learning the parameters of a possibilistic network from empirical data. The first method is a possibilistic approach while the second one first learns imprecise probability measures then transforms them into possibility distributions by means of probabilitypossibility transformations. The comparative evaluation focuses on learning belief networks on datasets with missing data and scarce datasets. Revue d’intelligence artificielle – n /JFRB, 1-13 2 RIA. Volume 2016 – n /JFRB