Course talk:CPSC522/Decision Networks

A concise and easy to understand page. Thanks Yan, Ricky and Yu. I have a couple of suggestions that I believe would be useful for you.

• A little bit more insight in the decision making process would be helpful in my opinion
• At the beginning you mentioned about one off and general decision networks. A small discussion of those topics would be a nice addition to the page.
• The applications tab might include some general applications that are widely used.
• Finally, David suggested that options that are not central to the theme of the page but necessary can be shown as other links to other existent Wiki pages. Since the no forgetting decision networks use variable elimination a link to the existing wiki page can be put there so that some one who might not have the background can visit and refresh/learn the necessary knowledge.

I hope my suggestions would be of help to you.

Thanks for your feedback! I will try my best to improve this page!

Hi Yan,

I have read your work, it is every organized, clear and easy to understand. But I found that there are some extra information that related to this topic that I suggest you to expand in this page:

1. How to make the decision networks, or how to solve the sequential decision problems, I think most readers are more interested in how to make it or how to use it to solve problem other than just to know what it is. (e.x. add decision variables first or utility first)

2. By drawing decision networks, how it helps to make decisions?

Thanks for the crisp introduction to decision network. I like the way you gave the precise definitions and examples. However the content is little too short to the extent decision network should be discussed. Here are few suggestions that you might like to add:

• You have talked about the nodes in your definition section. However no insight is provided corresponding to the edges. How edges connect nodes, and what are other properties in terms of the entire network must be met, can be discussed (like presence of cycle etc).
• Clear illustration how decision network is learnt. As you must know identifying nodes and their roles is not a trivial task. Hence how this is systemically addressed, the corresponding method can be illustrated
• In the application section you just named a few fields. How those fields actually use decision nets can be elaborated.
• It will be good to highlight the limitations of traditional decision net. And then motivating how the models described in the extension section helped certain aspects of those limitations.
• The bibliography you added is not correctly referred in the text.

best, Prithu

Thanks for your feedback! I will try my best to improve this page!

Thanks for your feedback! I will try my best to improve this page!

Hi Yan Zhao,

Such a concise and easy to understand review! Here are my scores and more details below that. Please let me know if you need any further clarification.
Scale of 1 to 5, where 1 = strongly disagree and 5 = strongly agree:

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[5] The topic is relevant for the course.
[4] The writing is clear and the English is good.
[4] The page is written at an appropriate level for CPSC 522 students (where the students have diverse backgrounds).
[3] The formalism (definitions, mathematics) was well chosen to make the page easier to understand.
[4] The abstract is a concise and clear summary.
[2] There were appropriate (original) examples that helped make the topic clear.
[4.5] There was appropriate use of (pseudo-) code.
[3] It had a good coverage of representations, semantics, inference and learning (as appropriate for the topic).
[4.5] It is correct.
[3] It was neither too short nor too long for the topic.
[3] It was an appropriate unit for a page (it shouldn't be split into different topics or merged with another page).
[5] It links to appropriate other pages in the wiki.
[5] The references and links to external pages are well chosen.
[3.5] I would recommend this page to someone who wanted to find out about the topic.
[2] This page should be highlighted as an exemplary page for others to emulate.

Comments:

I enjoyed reading this page, however, I believe this page can use the following suggestions:

A Practical and Motivational Example

An original motivational example can be presented to summarize the learning materials, especially for this page that has required grounds for an example to be built upon it.
As other reviewers mentioned before, a reader probably is interested in knowing how decision network is being used in practice.

A Little Too Concise

I found this page to be a little too concise:

• You probably can expand it by putting more insight into each section and/or applying the materials to a practical example.
• You might want to add a section to discuss its usage in a realistic case. You might want to just briefly describe it and then refer the readers to appropriate external links for more details.




Good job,
Yaashaar Hadadian

Thanks for your feedback! I will try my best to improve this page!