Finding, Scoring and Explaining Arguments in Bayesian Networks

Abstract: We propose a new approach to explain Bayesian Networks. The approach revolves around a new definition of a probabilistic argument and the evidence it provides. We define a notion of independent arguments, and propose an algorithm to extract a list of relevant, independent arguments given a Bayesian Network, a target node and a set of observations. To demonstrate the relevance of the arguments, we show how we can use the extracted arguments to approximate message passing. Finally, we show a simple scheme to explain the arguments in natural language.