Causal independence for probability assessment and inference using Bayesian networks

A Bayesian network is a probabilistic representation for uncertain relationships, which has proven to be useful for modeling real-world problems. When there are many potential causes of a given effect, however, both probability assessment and inference using a Bayesian network can be difficult. In this paper, we describe causal independence, a collection of conditional independence assertions and functional relationships that are often appropriate to apply to the representation of the uncertain interactions between causes and effect. We show how the use of causal independence in a Bayesian network can greatly simplify probability assessment as well as probabilistic inference.