Handling uncertainty in a medical study of dietary intake during pregnancy

Abstract

This paper is concerned with handling uncertainty as part of thefanalysis of data from a medical study. The study is investigating connectionsfbetween the birth weight of babies and the dietary intake of their mothers. Bayesianfbelief networks were used in the analysis. Their perceived benefits includef(i) an ability to represent the evidence emerging from the evolving study, dealingfeffectively with the inherent uncertainty involved; (ii) providing a way offrepresenting evidence graphically to facilitate analysis and communication withfclinicians; (iii) helping in the exploration of the data to reveal undiscoveredfknowledge; and (iv) providing a means of developing an expert system application.