FIRSCHEIN@SRI-AI.ARPA (02/12/86)
From: FIRSCHEIN@SRI-AI.ARPA
Bob Hummel will be giving a talk on Tuesday, Feb. 18 at 10:30,
Conf room EK242 (the "old" conf room). An abstract of his talk follows:
A Statistical Viewpoint on the Theory of Evidence
Robert Hummel
Courant Institute, New York University
Abstract
The Dempster/Shafer "Theory of Evidence" can be regarded as an alge-
braic space with a combination formula that combines the opinions of
"experts". This viewpoint, which is really the origin of the theory, will
be explained by introducing spaces with simple binary operations, giving
these spaces intuitive interpretations, relating them to Bayesian updating,
and showing that the spaces are (in a homomorphic sense) equivalent to the
Dempster/Shafer theory of evidence space.
The viewpoint allows us to remark on limitations of the theory. By
making compromises in a different manner, an alternative combination method
can be introduced. This representation of states of belief by "Parameter-
ized Statistics of Experts" will be described.