Finding Meaningful Bayesian Confirmation Measures

Abstract

The paper focuses on Bayesian confirmation measures used for evaluation of rules induced from data. To distinguish between many confirmation measures, their properties are analyzed. The article considers a group of symmetry properties. We demonstrate that the symmetry properties proposed in the literature focus on extreme cases corresponding to entailment or refutation of the rule's conclusion by its premise, forgetting intermediate cases. We conduct a thorough analysis of the symmetries regarding that the confirmation should express how much more probable the rule's hypothesis is when the premise is present rather than when the negation of the premise is present. As a result we point out which symmetries are desired for Bayesian confirmation measures. Next, we analyze a set of popular confirmation measures with respect to the symmetry properties and other valuable properties, being monotonicity M, Ex1 and weak Ex1, logicality L and weak L. Our work points out two measures to be the most meaningful ones regarding the considered properties.