Virtual Number of States

Properties > Virtual Number of States: brings up a window that allows you to specify the Virtual Number of States for the selected nodes.

This setting replaces the real number of states with a virtual number when computing the MDL score during learning. A node’s state count has an important impact on the MDL score computed during structural learning, so this setting lets you influence structural complexity locally. The more states a node has, the less chance it has of having linked parents during learning, and vice versa. Decreasing this parameter decreases the node’s MDL score, and vice versa.

Propagation

The Propagate State Virtual Number button opens a dialog for selecting the classes associated with the node. All nodes in the selected classes then receive the same state virtual number, or none if there is no value.

Learn more about the background and purpose of Virtual Number of States.