15.247 new book: Qualitative Methods for Reasoning under Uncertainty

From: by way of Willard McCarty (willard@lists.village.Virginia.EDU)
Date: Tue Sep 18 2001 - 04:29:59 EDT

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                   Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 15, No. 247.
           Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
                   <http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
                  <http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>

             Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2001 08:14:01 +0100
             From: "Arun Kumar Tripathi" <tripathi@informatik.tu-darmstadt.de>
             Subject: Qualitative Methods for Reasoning under Uncertainty

    Here is a new book from MIT desk-top. For more information
    please visit http://mitpress.mit.edu/0262161680

    Qualitative Methods for Reasoning under Uncertainty
    Simon Parsons

    In this book Simon Parsons describes qualitative methods for reasoning
    under uncertainty, "uncertainty" being a catch-all term for various types
    of imperfect information. The advantage of qualitative methods is that they
    do not require precise numerical information. Instead, they work with
    abstractions such as interval values and information about how values
    change. The author does not invent completely new methods for reasoning
    under uncertainty but provides the means to create qualitative versions of
    existing methods. To illustrate this, he develops qualitative versions of
    probability theory, possibility theory, and the Dempster-Shafer theory of
    evidence.

    According to Parsons, these theories are best considered complementary
    rather than exclusive. Thus the book supports the contention that rather

    than search for the one best method to handle all imperfect information,

    one should use whichever method best fits the problem. This approach leads
    naturally to the use of several different methods in the solution of a
    single problem and to the complexity of integrating the results--a problem
    to which qualitative methods provide a solution.

    Simon Parsons is a Reader in the Department of Computer Science at the
    University of Liverpool and the editor of the journal Knowledge Engineering
    Review.

    7 x 9, 514 pp.
    cloth ISBN 0-262-16168-0

    Jud Wolfskill
    Associate Publicist
    MIT Press
    5 Cambridge Center, 4th Floor
    Cambridge, MA 02142
    617.253.2079
    617.253.1709 fax
    wolfskil@mit.edu
    -------------------

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