Software Announcement

[Jie Cheng]

              ANNOUNCEMENT
=========================================================================

A belief network learning system is now available for download. It includes
a wizard-like interface and a construction engine.

Name: Belief Network Power Constructor
Version: 1.0 Beta 1
Platforms: 32-bit windows systems (windows95/NT)
Input: A data set with discrete values in the fields (attributes) and
optional domain knowledge (attribute ordering, partial ordering, direct
causes and effects).
Output: A network structure of the data set. 

Main Features:

1.Easy to use. It gathers necessary input information through 5 simple
steps.

2.Accessibility. Supports most of the popular desktop database and
spreadsheet formats, including: Ms-Access, dBase, Foxpro, Paradox, Excel
and text file formats. It also supports remote database servers like
ORACLE, SQL-SERVER through ODBC. 

3.Reusable. The engine is an ActiveX DLL, so that you can easily integrate
the engine into your belief network, datamining or knowledge base system
for windows95/NT. 

4.Efficient. This engine constructs belief networks by using conditional
independence(CI) tests. In general, it requires CI tests to the complexity
of O(N^4); when the attribute ordering is known, the complexity is O(N^2).
N is the number of attributes (fields).

5.Reliable. Modified mutual information calculation method is used as CI
test to make it more reliable when the data set is not large enough. 

6.Support domain knowledge. Complete ordering, partial ordering and causes
and effects can be used to constrain the search space and therefore speed
up the construction process. 

7.Running time is Linear to the number of records. 


The system can be downloaded from web site:
http://193.61.148.131/jcheng/bnpc.htm

Suggestions and comments are welcome.

----------------------------------------------------
Jie Cheng       email: j.cheng at ulst.ac.uk
16J24, Faculty of Informatics, UUJ, UK. BT37 0QB
Tel: 44 1232 366500 Fax: 44 1232 366068
http://193.61.148.131/jcheng/
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