The Nature of Uncertainty

Uncertainty pervades life and can arise from many sources. It is present in most tasks that require intelligent behaviour, such as planning, reasoning, problem solving, decision making, classification and many others dealing with real world entities and data. Consequently, the management of uncertainty is central to the development of computer based systems that can successfully execute these tasks. This, in turn, depends upon the adoption of uncertainty management techniques that are appropriate for the particular task in hand.