Method and apparatus to model the variables of a data set

Abstract

The present invention relates to modeling the variables of a data set by means of a robabilistic network including data nodes and causal links. The term 'probabilistic networks' includes Bayesian networks, belief networks, causal networks and knowledge maps. The variables of an input data set are registered and a population of genomes is generated each of which individually models the input data set. Each genome has a chromosome to represent the data nodes in a probabilistic network and a chromosome to represent the causal links between the data nodes. A crossover operation is performed between the chromosome data of parent genomes in the population to generate offspring genomes. The offspring genomes are then added to the genome population. A scoring operation is performed on genomes in the said population to derive scores representing the correspondence between the genomes and the input data. Genomes are selected from the population according to their scores and the crossover, scoring, addition and selecting operations for a plurality of generations of the genomes. Finally a genome is selected from the last generation according to the best score. A mutation operation may be performed on the genomes. The mutation may consist of the addition or deletion of a data node and the addition or deletion of a causal link.