Chapter 6 Inference with Tree-Clustering
As noted in Chapters 3, 4, topological characterization of tractability in graphical models is centered on the graph parameter called induced-width or tree-width. In this chap- ter, we take variable elimination algorithms such as bucket-elimination one step further, showing that they are a restricted version of schemes that are based on the notion of tree-decompositions which is applicable across the whole spectrum of graphical models. These methods have received different names in different research areas, such as join-tree clustering, clique-tree clustering and hyper-tree decompositions. We will refer to these schemes by the umbrella name tree-clustering or tree-decomposition. The complexity of these methods is governed by the induced-width, the same parameter that controls the performance of bucket elimination. We will start by extending the bucket-elimination algorithm into an algorithms that process a special class of tree-decompositions, called bucket-trees, and will then move to the general notion of tree-decomposition.
6.1 Bucket-Tree Elimination
The bucket-elimination algorithm, BE-bel, for belief updating computes the belief of the first node in the ordering, given all the evidence or just the probability of evidence. However, it is often desirable to answer the belief query for every variable in the network. A brute-force approach will require running BE-bel n times, each time with a different variable order. We will show next that this is unnecessary. By viewing bucket-elimination 103