Studeny.a4

M. Studeny: Attempts at axiomatic description of conditional independence. Kybernetika 25 (1989), supplement to n. 3, pp. 72-79.

Abstract
The paper is a survey without proofs. It concerns the problem of characterization of conditional independence relations (= structures) which arise in connection with probabilistic expert systems. The first two sections contain some new properties (= axioms) of conditional independence relations; the rest of the paper is a proposal for a proper generalization of the concept of conditional independence relation, named M-relation (= multiinformation relation). Some advantages of the M-relations are discussed. Open questions and hypotheses are expressed throughout the paper.