Famous uses of Bayesian Networks

BBC One drama “Troy: Fall of a City”. From left: David Gyasi as Achilles, Bella Dayne as Helen and Johnny Harris as Agamemnon

For me, Bayesian networks (B nets) unify much of artificial intelligence, and cover things like Causal AI and Quantum Mechanics that no other branch of AI covers nearly as well. Even the field of Neural Nets is a subset of the field of B nets: NNs are merely layered B nets that contain only deterministic nodes. B nets are simply a graphical representation of the chain rule of conditional probabilities. So any concept that includes probability or statistics is included under the topic of B nets.  Hence,  B nets are never going to go out of style.

I like to compare the definitions of B nets and of a Group in Algebra. Both definitions are so simple, yet so productive. I like to say that the definition of a Group (or the definition of a B net) is the definition that launched a thousand deep theorems and useful applications  (The poet Christopher Marlowe said that the face of Helen of Troy was: “the face that launched a thousand ships”) .

In this series of short blog posts, I will aim to convey my enthusiasm and love for B nets. (started this series on May 16, 2020, with the Reinforcement Learning episode)

1. Reinforcement Learning & Bayesian Networks
2. Quantopian & Bayesian Networks
3. Capturing the Golden State Killer & Bayesian Networks
4. Baby’s first Bayesian Network onesie
5. Bill Gates, The Richest Man in the World, loves Bayesian Networks
6. Black Swans & Bayesian Networks
7. Mark Twain & Bayesian Network Statistics
8. Nate Silver, Sports Prediction & Bayesian Networks
9. Marketing & Bayesian Networks
10. How the Obama Presidential Campaigns Used Uplift Modelling (a subset of Causal Inference) to trounce the Republicans
11. Medical Diagnosis & Bayesian Networks
12. Daphne Koller, cofounder of Coursera and Insitro, loves Bayesian Networks
13. Farming (Hydroponics) & Bayesian Networks
14. Sports Betting (soccer/football in UK) & Bayesian Networks
15. Factor Technology Inc., computer steered oil well drilling & Bayesian Networks
16. Making your Smart Grid **smarter** & Bayesian Networks
17. Risk Assessment, Fenton/Neil book & Bayesian networks
18. Recommendation Systems & Bayesian Networks
19. Quantum Bayesian Network view of hybrid quantum-classical computation
20. Anomaly Detection (Fraud Detection) & Bayesian Networks
21. Information Theory (Turbo Codes) & Bayesian Networks
22. Neural Networks versus Bayesian Networks
23. Healthcare & Bayesian Networks
24. The Venture Capitalist Robot & Bayesian Networks
25. Causal AI & Bayesian Networks
26. The wisdom of investing pocket change on Causal Inference analysis before making multi-million dollar business decisions
27. Netflix Bullish About Causal Inference
28. Famous Business/Economics Guru, Clayton Christensen, big fan of Causal Inference
29. Transformer Networks used in NLP can be represented graphically as Dynamic Bayesian Networks
30. Epidemiology & Bayesian Networks
31. Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) and Bayesian Networks
32. GIT & Bayesian Networks
33. Coming Soon: Image Processing & Bayesian Networks
34. Coming Soon: Transportability (aka External Validity) & Bayesian Networks
35. Coming Soon: Sensor Fusion (in Robotics, Defense, IoT) & Bayesian Networks