Graphical and algebraic representatives of conditional independence models

Abstract

The topic of this chapter is conditional independence models. We review mathematical objects that are used to generate conditional independence models in the area of probabilistic reasoning. More specifically, we mention undirected graphs, acyclic directed graphs, chain graphs, and an alternative algebraic approach that uses certain integer-valued vectors, named imsets. We compare the expressive power of these objects and discuss the problem of their uniqueness. © 2007 Springer.