Bayesian Network classifiers (BNCs) are Bayesian Network (BN) models specifically tailored for classification tasks. There is a wide range of existing models that vary in complexity and efficiency. All of them have in common the ability to deal with uncertainty in a very natural way, at the same time providing a descriptive environment. In this chapter, the authors focus on the family of semi-naïve Bayesian classifiers (naïve Bayes, AODE, TAN, kDB, etc.), motivated by the good trade-off between efficiency and performance they provide. The domain of the BNs is generally of discrete nature, but since the presence of continuous variables is very common, the chapter discusses more classical and novel approaches to handling numeric data. In this chapter the authors also discuss more recent techniques such as multi-dimensional and dynamic models. Last but not least, they focus on applications and recent developments, including some of the BNCs approaches to the multi-class problem together with other traditionally successful and cutting edge cases regarding real-world applications.
Learning Bayesian Network Classifiers: Searching in a Space of Partially Directed Acyclic Graphs
