Qualitative Probabilistic Reasoning

Soft computing is likely to play an important role in science and engineering in the future. The successful applications of soft computing and the rapid growth suggest that the impact of soft computing will be felt increasingly in coming years. Soft Computing encourages the integration of soft computing techniques and tools into both everyday and advanced applications. This Open access peer-reviewed journal serves as a platform that fosters new applications for all scientists and engineers engaged in research and development in this fast growing field.

The problem of inferring probability comparisons between events from an initial set of comparisons arises in several contexts, ranging from decision theory to artificial intelligence to formal semantics. In this paper, we treat the problem as follows: beginning with a binary relation ≥ on events that does not preclude a probabilistic interpretation, in the sense that ≥ has extensions that are probabilistically representable, we characterize the extension ≥+ of ≥ that is exactly the intersection of all probabilistically representable extensions of ≥. This extension ≥+ gives us all the additional comparisons that we are entitled to infer from ≥, based on the assumption that there is some probability measure of which ≥ gives us partial qualitative information. We pay special attention to the problem of extending an order on states to an order on events. In addition to the probabilistic interpretation, this problem has a more general interpretation involving measurement of any additive quantity: e.g., given comparisons between the weights of individual objects, what comparisons between the weights of groups of objects can we infer?

International Journal of Artificial Intelligence and Soft Computing (IJAISC) is an open access peer-reviewed journal that provides an excellent international forum for sharing knowledge and results in theory, methodology and applications of Artificial Intelligence, Soft Computing. The Journal looks for significant contributions to all major fields of the Artificial Intelligence, Soft Computing in theoretical and practical aspects.
The aim of the Journal is to provide a platform to the researchers and practitioners from both academia as well as industry to meet and share cutting-edge development in the field. Authors are solicited to contribute to the journal by submitting articles that illustrate research results, projects, surveying works and industrial experiences that describe significant advances in the areas of Soft Computing, Artificial Intelligence and Applications.