Summer student programme 2013

Modelling uncertainty using probability, and belief propagation

Here are references to a couple of textbooks which describe the belief propagation algorithms in detail and provide the required background for modelling systems with uncertainty using probability.

David Barber, Bayesian reasoning and machine learning, Cambridge university press, 2012
Daphne Koller and Nir Friedman, Probabilistic graphical models, MIT press, 2009

Here is a very readable book from one of the founders of the subject, and winner of the Turing award for 2011.

Judea Pearl, Probabilistic reasoning in intelligent systems, Morgan Kaufmann, 1988

Here is a reference to a paper on extending belief propagation to checking satisfiability of boolean formulas.

Alfredo Braunstein, Marc Mézard and Riccardo Zecchina, Survey propagation: an algorithm for satisfiability, Random structures and algorithms, Volume 27(2), Sep 2005, pp 201-226.