Confidence as Higher-Order Uncertainty
Pei Wang · 2001
With conicting evidence, a reasoning system derives uncertain conclusions. If the system is open to new evidence, it faces additionally a higher-order uncertainty, because the rst-order uncertainty evaluations are uncertain themselves | they can be changed by future evidence. A new measurement, condence, is introduced for this higher-order uncertainty. It is de- ned in terms of the amount of available evidence, and interpreted and processed as the relative stability of the rst-order uncertainty evaluation. Its relation with other approaches of \\reasoning with uncertainty " is also discussed. Keywords. condence, evidence, frequency interval, revision, inference, deduction, induction, abduction. 1