Asymptotic Conditional Probabilities: The Non-Unary Case
Grove, Adam J. ; Halpern, Joseph Y. ; Koller, Daphne
J. Symbolic Logic, Tome 61 (1996) no. 1, p. 250-276 / Harvested from Project Euclid
Motivated by problems that arise in computing degrees of belief, we consider the problem of computing asymptotic conditional probabilities for first-order sentences. Given first-order sentences $\varphi$ and $\theta$, we consider the structures with domain $\{1,\ldots, N\}$ that satisfy $\theta$, and compute the fraction of them in which $\varphi$ is true. We then consider what happens to this fraction as $N$ gets large. This extends the work on 0-1 laws that considers the limiting probability of first-order sentences, by considering asymptotic conditional probabilities. As shown by Liogon'kii [24], if there is a non-unary predicate symbol in the vocabulary, asymptotic conditional probabilities do not always exist. We extend this result to show that asymptotic conditional probabilities do not always exist for any reasonable notion of limit. Liogon'kii also showed that the problem of deciding whether the limit exists is undecidable. We analyze the complexity of three problems with respect to this limit: deciding whether it is well-defined, whether it exists, and whether it lies in some nontrivial interval. Matching upper and lower bounds are given for all three problems, showing them to be highly undecidable.
Publié le : 1996-03-14
Classification: 
@article{1183744938,
     author = {Grove, Adam J. and Halpern, Joseph Y. and Koller, Daphne},
     title = {Asymptotic Conditional Probabilities: The Non-Unary Case},
     journal = {J. Symbolic Logic},
     volume = {61},
     number = {1},
     year = {1996},
     pages = { 250-276},
     language = {en},
     url = {http://dml.mathdoc.fr/item/1183744938}
}
Grove, Adam J.; Halpern, Joseph Y.; Koller, Daphne. Asymptotic Conditional Probabilities: The Non-Unary Case. J. Symbolic Logic, Tome 61 (1996) no. 1, pp.  250-276. http://gdmltest.u-ga.fr/item/1183744938/