The Nature of Uncertainty

Abstract

Uncertainty pervades life and can arise from many sources. It is present in most tasks that require intelligent behaviour, such as planning, reasoning, problem solving, decision making, classification and many others dealing with real world entities and data. Consequently, the management of uncertainty is central to the development of computer based systems that can successfully execute these tasks. This, in turn, depends upon the adoption of uncertainty management techniques that are appropriate for the particular task in hand.

I am inviting the reader to imagine... that there is a space of possible theories about probability that has been rather constant from 1660 to the present... perhaps an understanding of our space and its preconditions can liberate us from the cycle of probability theories that has trapped us for so long. (Hacking, 1975).