Probabilistic reasoning
- peech recognition
- recognize speech and wreck a nice beach
- machine translation
- l’avocat general: the attorney general and the general avocado
- probabilities make it possible to combine evidence from multiple sources in a systematic way.
Meaning of probabilities
- Frequentist
- I threw the coin 10 times and it turned up heads 5 times
- Subjective
- I believe the coin is fair
The chain rule
P(w1,w2,...,wn)=P(wm∣w1,...,wn−1)...P(w2∣w1)P(w1)
Independence
- Two events are independent if
P(A∩B)=P(A)P(B)P(A∣B)=P(A)
Adding vs. removing constraints
- Adding constraints
- P(walk = yes | weather = nice, freetime = yes, …)
- more accurate
- more difficult to estimate
- Removing constraints(back off)
- P(walk = yes | weather = nice, freetime = yes, …)
- P(walk = yes | weather = nice, freetime = yes)
- P(walk = yes | weather = nice)
- less accurate but more statistically feasibile