Learning Probabilistic Graphical Models in R

Chapter 1. Probabilistic Reasoning

Among all the predictions that were made about the 21^st century, maybe the most unexpected one was that we would collect such a formidable amount of data about everything, everyday, and everywhere in the world. Recent years have seen an incredible explosion of data collection about our world, our lives, and technology; this is the main driver of what we can certainly call a revolution. We live in the Age of Information. But collecting data is nothing if we don't exploit it and try to extract knowledge out of it.

At the beginning of the 20^th century, with the birth of statistics, the world was all about collecting data and making statistics. In that time, the only reliable tools were pencils and paper and of course, ...