com.bayesserver.inference

Interface QueryDistributionCollection

All Superinterfaces:

Collection<QueryDistribution>, Iterable<QueryDistribution>, List<QueryDistribution>

All Known Implementing Classes:

DefaultQueryDistributionCollection

public interface QueryDistributionCollection
extends List<QueryDistribution>

The collection of distributions to be calculated by a Inference.query(com.bayesserver.inference.QueryOptions, com.bayesserver.inference.QueryOutput). Only request those that you need. If required, a distribution collection can be dynamically attached or detached from an inference engine. Also note that individual elements can be enabled or disabled on a per query basis.

Each distribution added, such as a Table, acts like a buffer. I.e. the values are populated by the Inference.query(com.bayesserver.inference.QueryOptions, com.bayesserver.inference.QueryOutput) method. This means that the same distributions can be re-used across multiple calls to Inference.query(com.bayesserver.inference.QueryOptions, com.bayesserver.inference.QueryOutput), without the need to recreate the distribution each time.

It is important not to request distributions you do not need, because the computations will take longer. For example, it is common to request all marginal probabilities, P(A), P(B), P(C), ... , P(Z) given the evidence, however if you only need to know P(A) and P(B) given the evidence, then limit the query to just these distributions.

Typically the distributions requested are a number of marginal probabilities, such as P(A), P(B), P(C) etc... given the evidence, however it is also possible to request distributions over more than one variable, so we might query P(A), P(B,C) given the evidence.

If you are performing a batch of queries, there is no need to remove distributions that happen to have evidence set for a particular query.

For Dynamic Bayesian networks, times can be associated with distribution variables, to predict values in the future, present or past.

Method Summary

Modifier and Type	Method and Description
QueryDistribution	add(Distribution distribution) Adds the specified distribution, automatically creating a QueryDistribution instance.

Methods inherited from interface java.util.List

add, add, addAll, addAll, clear, contains, containsAll, equals, get, hashCode, indexOf, isEmpty, iterator, lastIndexOf, listIterator, listIterator, remove, remove, removeAll, replaceAll, retainAll, set, size, sort, spliterator, subList, toArray, toArray

Methods inherited from interface java.util.Collection

parallelStream, removeIf, stream

Methods inherited from interface java.lang.Iterable

forEach

Method Detail

add

QueryDistribution add(Distribution distribution)

Adds the specified distribution, automatically creating a QueryDistribution instance.

Parameters:

distribution - The distribution to query.

Returns:

The automatically created QueryDistribution instance.