No label defined (Q4375200)

We study the problem of plausible prediction, i.e., the problem of building predictive models from data in the presence of uncertainty. Our approach to this problem is based on the language of Bayesian probability theory both in its traditional and information theoretic form. We study Bayesian prediction theoretically and empirically with finite mixture models. Such models are interesting due to their ability to accurately model complex distributions with few parameters. In addition, finite mixture models can be viewed as a probabilistic formulation of many model families commonly used in machine learning and computational intelligence. The Bayesian predictive approach presented can be applied to a wide class of prediction problems appearing in various application domains, e.g., medical and fault diagnostic problems, design problems and sales support systems. Using publicly available data sets, we demonstrate empirically that Bayesian prediction with finite mixtures is highly competitive when compared to the results achieved with other popular non-Bayesian approaches using, for example, neural network and decision tree models. The Bayesian prediction method presented constitutes the kernel of the D-SIDE/C-SIDE software currently used in industrial applications.