In this paper, we consider unsupervised partitioning problems, such as clustering, image segmentation, video segmentation and other change-point detection problems. We focus on partitioning problems based explicitly or implicitly on the minimization of Euclidean distortions, which include mean-based change-point detection, K-means, spectral clustering and normalized cuts. Our main goal is to learn a Mahalanobis metric for these unsupervised problems, leading to feature weighting and/or selection. This is done in a supervised way by assuming the availability of several potentially partially labelled datasets that share the same metric. We cast the metric learning problem as a large-margin structured prediction problem, with proper definition of regularizers and losses, leading to a convex optimization problem which can be solved efficiently with iterative techniques. We provide experiments where we show how learning the metric may significantly improve the partitioning performance in synthetic examples, bioinformatics, video segmentation and image segmentation problems.

The classical propositional assumption-based model is extended to incorporate probabilities for the assumptions. Then it is placed into the framework of evidence theory. Several authors like Laskey, Lehner (1989) and Provan (1990) already proposed a similar point of view, but the first paper is not as much concerned with mathematical foundations, and Provan's paper develops into a different direction. Here we thoroughly develop and present the mathematical foundations of this theory, together with computational methods adapted from Reiter, De Kleer (1987) and Inoue (1992). Finally, recently proposed techniques for computing degrees of support are presented.

In this paper some initial work towards a new approach to qualitative reasoning under uncertainty is presented. This method is not only applicable to qualitative probabilistic reasoning, as is the case with other methods, but also allows the qualitative propagation within networks of values based upon possibility theory and Dempster-Shafer evidence theory. The method is applied to two simple networks from which a large class of directed graphs may be constructed. The results of this analysis are used to compare the qualitative behaviour of the three major quantitative uncertainty handling formalisms, and to demonstrate that the qualitative integration of the formalisms is possible under certain assumptions.

Argumentation is the process of constructing arguments about propositions, and the assignment of statements of confidence to those propositions based on the nature and relative strength of their supporting arguments. The process is modelled as a labelled deductive system, in which propositions are doubly labelled with the grounds on which they are based and a representation of the confidence attached to the argument. Argument construction is captured by a generalized argument consequence relation based on the ^,--fragment of minimal logic. Arguments can be aggregated by a variety of numeric and symbolic flattening functions. This approach appears to shed light on the common logical structure of a variety of quantitative, qualitative and defeasible uncertainty calculi.

This paper describes ongoing research into planning in an uncertain environment. In particular, it introduces U-Plan, a planning system that constructs quantitatively ranked plans given an incomplete description of the state of the world. U-Plan uses a DempsterShafer interval to characterise uncertain and incomplete information about the state of the world. The planner takes as input what is known about the world, and constructs a number of possible initial states with representations at different abstraction levels. A plan is constructed for the initial state with the greatest support, and this plan is tested to see if it will work for other possible initial states. All, part, or none of the existing plans may be used in the generation of the plans for the remaining possible worlds. Planning takes place in an abstraction hierarchy where strategic decisions are made before tactical decisions. A super-plan is then constructed, based on merging the set of plans and the appropriately timed acquisition of essential knowledge, which is used to decide between plan alternatives. U-Plan usually produces a super-plan in less time than a classical planner would take to produce a set of plans, one for each possible world.

We describe a method for time-critical decision making involving sequential tasks and stochastic processes. The method employs several iterative refinement routines for solving different aspects of the decision making problem. This paper concentrates on the meta-level control problem of deliberation scheduling, allocating computational resources to these routines. We provide different models corresponding to optimization problems that capture the different circumstances and computational strategies for decision making under time constraints. We consider precursor models in which all decision making is performed prior to execution and recurrent models in which decision making is performed in parallel with execution, accounting for the states observed during execution and anticipating future states. We describe algorithms for precursor and recurrent models and provide the results of our empirical investigations to date.

Numerous methods for probabilistic reasoning in large, complex belief or decision networks are currently being developed. There has been little research on automating the dynamic, incremental construction of decision models. A uniform value-driven method of decision model construction is proposed for the hierarchical complete diagnosis. Hierarchical complete diagnostic reasoning is formulated as a stochastic process and modeled using influence diagrams. Given observations, this method creates decision models in order to obtain the best actions sequentially for locating and repairing a fault at minimum cost. This method construct decision models incrementally, interleaving probe actions with model construction and evaluation. The method treats meta-level and baselevel tasks uniformly. That is, the method takes a decision-theoretic look at the control of search in causal pathways and structural hierarchies.

Previous algorithms for the construction of Bayesian belief network structures from data have been either highly dependent on conditional independence (CI) tests, or have required an ordering on the nodes to be supplied by the user. We present an algorithm that integrates these two approaches - CI tests are used to generate an ordering on the nodes from the database which is then used to recover the underlying Bayesian network structure using a non CI based method. Results of preliminary evaluation of the algorithm on two networks (ALARM and LED) are presented. We also discuss some algorithm performance issues and open problems.

As belief networks are used to model increasingly complex situations, the need to automatically construct them from large databases will become paramount. This paper concentrates on solving a part of the belief network induction problem: that of learning the quantitative structure (the conditional probabilities), given the qualitative structure. In particular, a theory is presented that shows how to propagate inference distributions in a belief network, with the only assumption being that the given qualitative structure is correct. Most inference algorithms must make at least this assumption. The theory is based on four network transformations that are sufficient for any inference in a belief network. Furthermore, the claim is made that contrary to popular belief, error will not necessarily grow as the inference chain grows. Instead, for QBN belief nets induced from large enough samples, the error is more likely to decrease as the size of the inference chain increases.

One of the most difficult aspects of modeling complex dilemmas in decision-analytic terms is composing a diagram of relevance relations from a set of domain concepts. Decision models in domains such as medicine, however, exhibit certain prototypical patterns that can guide the modeling process. Medical concepts can be classified according to semantic types that have characteristic positions and typical roles in an influence-diagram model. We have developed a graph-grammar production system that uses such inherent interrelationships among medical terms to f9-cilitate the modeling of medical decisions.