Events Calendar

CS Colloquium: Paul Elmore (Stennis Space Center) - Possiblistic & Probabilistic Approaches for Uncertainty Combinations and Measures

Speaker: Paul Elmore, Stennis Space Center

Talk Title: Possiblistic & Probabilistic Approaches for Uncertainty Combinations and Measures

Series: CS Colloquium

Abstract: We present research on use of probabilistic and possiblistic sources of information for use in decision-making. We seek approaches to assist this process by providing information theory based quantitative evaluations to guide decisions. In particular, we examine aspects of the possiblistic conditioning of probability and analyze cases of completely certain and uncertain probability with four possibility distributions. To consider whether the conditioned probability is more informative for decision-making, three measures, Shannon entropy, Gini index and Renyi entropy are used to compare the original probability distributions and the conditioned distribution for the cases described. We found compatible results for comparing the informativeness of the original versus the conditioned probability. The three measures have increasing values with increasing uncertainty, meaning the conditioned probability will be more informative for decision making if its measure value is less than that measure for the original probability and vice-versa. Additionally, we use the Zadeh consistency measure to assess these cases and found it correlates with the evaluation results. We are investigating ways for application to actual decision-making to assess if outcomes that are more desirable result when the evaluation measures have indicated that the conditioned probability is more informative.

Biography: Dr. Paul Elmore research interests are in geospatial models and uncertainty estimation methods for geophysical information. He earned a Ph.D. in physics from University of Mississippi in 1996, where his research focus was in nonlinear acoustics. He has been a Research Physicist in the Geospatial Sciences and Technology Branch of the Naval Research Laboratory at the Stennis Space Center since 2001 and principal investigator of research and development in bathymetric data fusion and uncertainty estimation since 2007.

Host: Teamcore

Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Assistant to CS chair