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Structural Priors

Overview

A Structural Prior assigns prior knowledge to an individual arc within a range of -1.0 to 1.0. These priors can be saved to and loaded from a Dictionary, a simple text file that can be opened and edited with any text editor. The syntax of a Dictionary containing Structural Priors is analogous to that of Dictionaries of other attributes. As an alternative to the equal sign ”=” shown in the example below, you can also use a space or a tab.

FBS->K=0.076695684161 Condition->K=1.0 BP->K=0.076695684161 EF-TTE->FBS=0.068965584386 Condition->FBS=1.0 DM->FBS=1.0 PR->FBS=0.076695684161

If you want to define a Dictionary from scratch but do not remember the syntax, you can simply define a Structural Prior on a random arc and then export the Dictionary. You then have a correct code sample as a reference.

Usage

To export a Dictionary of the Structural Priors of your current Bayesian network, select Data > Export Dictionary > Arc > Structural Priors from the Menus.

Importing a Structural Priors dictionary