Some qualitative approaches to applying the Dempster-Shafer theory

Abstract

This paper introduces the idea of using the Dempster-Shafer theory of evidence with qualitative values. Dempster-Shafer theory is a formalism for reasoning under uncertainty which may be viewed as a generalisation of probability theory with special advantages in its treatment of ambiguous data and the ignorance arising from it. Here we are interested in applying the theory when the numbers that it usually operates over are not universally available. To cope with this lack of numbers, we use qualitative, semiqualitative, and linguistic values, and apply a form of order of magnitude reasoning. 1 Introduction Dempster-Shafer theory is a numerical method for evidential reasoning. The theory originated with a paper by the statistician Arthur Dempster [7] who wanted to free probability theory from the need to attach a measure of uncertainty to every hypothesis under consideration [11]. His work remained hidden in the statistics literature until Glenn Shafer, one of Dempster's students, brou...

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