Recent work in supervised learning has shown that a surprisingly simple Bayesian classifier with strong assumptions of independence among features, called naive Bayes, is competitive with state-of-the-art classifiers such as C4.5. This fact raises the question of whether a classifier with less restrictive assumptions can perform even better. In this paper we evaluate approaches for inducing classifiers from data, based on the theory of learning Bayesian networks. These networks are factored representations of probability distributions that generalize the naive Bayesian classifier and explicitly represent statements about independence. Among these approaches we single out a method we call Tree Augmented Naive Bayes (TAN), which outperforms naive Bayes, yet at the same time maintains the computational simplicity (no search involved) and robustness that characterize naive Bayes. We experimentally tested these approaches, using problems from the University of California at Irvine repository, and compared them to C4.5, naive Bayes, and wrapper methods for feature selection.

. We examine a novel addition to the known methods for learning Bayesian networks from data that improves the quality of the learned networks. Our approach explicitly represents and learns the local structure in the conditional probability distributions (CPDs) that quantify these networks. This increases the space of possible models, enabling the representation of CPDs with a variable number of parameters. The resulting learning procedure induces models that better emulate the interactions present in the data. We describe the theoretical foundations and practical aspects of learning local structures and provide an empirical evaluation of the proposed learning procedure. This evaluation indicates that learning curves characterizing this procedure converge faster, in the number of training instances, than those of the standard procedure, which ignores the local structure of the CPDs. Our results also show that networks learned with local structures tend to be more complex (in terms of a...

In recent years there has been a flurry of works on learning Bayesian networks from data. One of the hard problems in this area is how to effectively learn the structure of a belief network from incomplete data---that is, in the presence of missing values or hidden variables. In a recent paper, I introduced an algorithm called Structural EM that combines the standard Expectation Maximization (EM) algorithm, which optimizes parameters, with structure search for model selection. That algorithm learns networks based on penalized likelihood scores, which include the BIC/MDL score and various approximations to the Bayesian score. In this paper, I extend Structural EM to deal directly with Bayesian model selection. I prove the convergence of the resulting algorithm and show how to apply it for learning a large class of probabilistic models, including Bayesian networks and some variants thereof.

Dynamic probabilistic networks are a compact representation of complex stochastic processes. In this paper we examine how to learn the structure of a DPN from data. We extend structure scoring rules for standard probabilistic networks to the dynamic case, and show how to search for structure when some of the variables are hidden. Finally, we examine two applications where such a technology might be useful: predicting and classifying dynamic behaviors, and learning causal orderings in biological processes. We provide empirical results that demonstrate the applicability of our methods in both domains. 1

This literature review discusses different methods under the general rubric of learning Bayesian networks from data, and includes some overlapping work on more general probabilistic networks. Connections are drawn between the statistical, neural network, and uncertainty communities, and between the different methodological communities, such as Bayesian, description length, and classical statistics. Basic concepts for learning and Bayesian networks are introduced and methods are then reviewed. Methods are discussed for learning parameters of a probabilistic network, for learning the structure, and for learning hidden variables. The presentation avoids formal definitions and theorems, as these are plentiful in the literature, and instead illustrates key concepts with simplified examples. Keywords--- Bayesian networks, graphical models, hidden variables, learning, learning structure, probabilistic networks, knowledge discovery. I. Introduction Probabilistic networks or probabilistic gra...

Learning Bayesian networks is often cast as an optimization problem, where the computational task is to find a structure that maximizes a statistically motivated score. By and large, existing learning tools address this optimization problem using standard heuristic search techniques. Since the search space is extremely large, such search procedures can spend most of the time examining candidates that are extremely unreasonable. This problem becomes critical when we deal with data sets that are large either in the number of instances, or the number of attributes. In this paper, we introduce an algorithm that achieves faster learning by restricting the search space. This iterative algorithm restricts the parents of each variable to belong to a small subset of candidates. We then search for a network that satisfies these constraints. The learned network is then used for selecting better candidates for the next iteration. We evaluate this algorithm both on synthetic and real-life data. Our results show that it is significantly faster than alternative search procedures without loss of quality in the learned structures. 1

In recent years there has been a flurry of works on learning probabilistic belief networks. Current state of the art methods have been shown to be successful for two learning scenarios: learning both network structure and parameters from complete data, and learning parameters for a fixed network from incomplete data---that is, in the presence of missing values or hidden variables. However, no method has yet been demonstrated to effectively learn network structure from incomplete data. In this paper, we propose a new method for learning network structure from incomplete data. This method is based on an extension of the Expectation-Maximization (EM) algorithm for model selection problems that performs search for the best structure inside the EM procedure. We prove the convergence of this algorithm, and adapt it for learning belief networks. We then describe how to learn networks in two scenarios: when the data contains missing values, and in the presence of hidden variables. We provide...

Recent work in supervised learning has shown that a surprisingly simple Bayesian classifier with strong assumptions of independence among features, called naive Bayes, is competitive with state of the art classifiers such as C4.5. This fact raises the question of whether a classifier with less restrictive assumptions can perform even better. In this paper we examine and evaluate approaches for inducing classifiers from data, based on recent results in the theory of learning Bayesian networks. Bayesian networks are factored representations of probability distributions that generalize the naive Bayes classifier and explicitly represent statements about independence. Among these approacheswe single out a method we call Tree Augmented Naive Bayes (TAN), which outperforms naive Bayes, yet at the same time maintains the computational simplicity (no search involved) and robustness which are characteristic of naive Bayes. We experimentally tested these approaches using benchmark problems from...

Recently, new representation languages that integrate first order logic with Bayesian networks have been developed. Bayesian logic programs are one of these languages. In this paper, we present results on combining Inductive Logic Programming (ILP) with Bayesian networks to learn both the qualitative and the quantitative components of Bayesian logic programs. More precisely, we show how to combine the ILP setting learning from interpretations with score-based techniques for learning Bayesian networks. Thus, the paper positively answers Koller and Pfeffer's question, whether techniques from ILP could help to learn the logical component of first order probabilistic models.

This paper provides algorithms that use an information-theoretic analysis to learn Bayesian network structures from data. Based on our three-phase learning framework, we develop efficient algorithms that can effectively learn Bayesian networks, requiring only polynomial numbers of conditional independence (CI) tests in typical cases. We provide precise conditions that specify when these algorithms are guaranteed to be correct as well as empirical evidence (from real world applications and simulation tests) that demonstrates that these systems work efficiently and reliably in practice.