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The (Symbolic) methods basically represent uncertainty belief as being
- True,
- False, or
- Neither True nor False.
Some methods also had problems with
- Incomplete Knowledge
- Contradictions in the knowledge.
Statistical methods provide a method for representing beliefs that are not
certain (or uncertain) but for which there may be some supporting (or
contradictory) evidence.
Statistical methods offer advantages in two broad scenarios:
- Genuine Randomness
- -- Card games are a good example. We may not be able
to predict any outcomes with certainty but we have knowledge about the
likelihood of certain items (e.g. like being dealt an ace) and we can
exploit this.
- Exceptions
- -- Symbolic methods can represent this. However if the
number of exceptions is large such system tend to break down. Many common sense
and expert reasoning tasks for example. Statistical techniques can
summarise large exceptions without resorting enumeration.
dave@cs.cf.ac.uk