On Nonspecific Evidence

TL;DR

This paper presents a method for partitioning evidence about multiple events by minimizing internal conflict, enabling better reasoning when evidence is weakly specified and ambiguous.

Contribution

It introduces a novel criterion based on conflict minimization for partitioning evidence into event-related subsets, with an iterative algorithm for optimization.

Findings

Effective partitioning of evidence reduces ambiguity

Algorithm successfully minimizes overall conflict

Improves reasoning accuracy in uncertain scenarios

Abstract

When simultaneously reasoning with evidences about several different events it is necessary to separate the evidence according to event. These events should then be handled independently. However, when propositions of evidences are weakly specified in the sense that it may not be certain to which event they are referring, this may not be directly possible. In this paper a criterion for partitioning evidences into subsets representing events is established. This criterion, derived from the conflict within each subset, involves minimising a criterion function for the overall conflict of the partition. An algorithm based on characteristics of the criterion function and an iterative optimisation among partitionings of evidences is proposed.