Charles Explorer logo
🇬🇧

A comparison of two approaches for solving unconstrained influence diagrams

Publication at Faculty of Mathematics and Physics |
2009

Abstract

Unconstrained influence diagram generalize standard influence diagram by removing the requirement of time ordering on decisions. In this framework, we may have a partial ordering of the decisions, and a solution to the decision problem therefore consists not only of a decision policy for the various decisions, but also of a conditional specification of what to do next.

Relative to the complexity of solving an influence diagram, finding a solution to an unconstrained influence diagram may be computationally very demanding w.r.t. both time and space. Hence, there is a need for efficient algorithms that can deal with (and take advantage of) the idiosyncrasies of the language.

In this paper we propose two such solution algorithms. One resembles the variable elimination technique from influence diagrams, whereas the other is based on conditioning and supports any-space inference.

Finally, we present an empirical comparison of the proposed methods.