In this paper we examine a novel addition to the known methods for learning Bayesian networks from data that improves the quality of the learned networks. Our approach explicitly represents and learns the local structure in the conditional probability tables (CPTs), that quantify these networks. This increases the space of possible models, enabling the representation of CPTs with a variable number of parameters that depends on the learned local structures. The resulting learning procedure is capable of inducing models that better emulate the real complexity of the interactions present in the data. We describe the theoretical foundations and practical aspects of learning local structures, as well as an empirical evaluation of the proposed method. This evaluation indicates that learning curves characterizing the procedure that exploits the local structure converge faster than these of the standard procedure. Our results also show that networks learned with local structure tend to be more complex (in terms of arcs), yet require less parameters.

本文提出了一种从数据中学习贝叶斯网络的新方法——显式地表示和学习CPT中的局部结构，从而提高所学习到的网络的质量，增加了可能的模型空间，并能够诱导出更好地模拟数据中存在的相互作用复杂性的模型。

学习具有局部结构的贝叶斯网络