WORKSHOP - Heuristics, Probabilities and Causality

University Of California-Irvine, Irvine CA

Investigators

Abstract

The workshop is planed to honor the life and the scientific achievements of Judea Pearl.The workshop brings together prominent scholars from the three areas in which Judea Pearl had landmark contributions, Heuristics, Probabilistic Reasoning and Causality. It is centered around an edited book; a tribute to Judea Pearl that includes 30 articles in the three areas. The book is co-edited by Pearl's past students and colleagues: Rina Dechter, Hector Geffner and Joe Halpern who also organize the workshop. During the workshop day about about 20 scholars, whose work appear in the book, will present their work. The workshop is open to the public. In addition to about 30 visitors from around the world, it will be attended by faculty and students at UCLA, and in California, and by community members. This event coincides with the 25th anniversary of the first paper by Judea in which he introduced "Bayesian networks" in 1985. In this context, a unique book exhibit will be on display, featuring rare first-editions of several milestones in the history of causal and probabilistic reasoning, from Huygens (1657) and Bernoulli (1713) to Bayes (1763) and Laplace (1812), from Hume (1739) and Mill (1843) to Boole (1847), Galton (1895) and Turing (1953). The workshop facilitates disseminating the ideas developed in the past few decades in the three fields, featuring leading scholars and the edited book that include state of the art articles as well as historical perspectives of the three fields. The workshop presentations and book will draw additional researchers into the three fields.