Elements of GeNIe Diagrams: Node types

From DSL

GeNIe supports the following node types:

Chance nodes, drawn as ovals, denote random variables.

There are two basic types of discrete chance nodes: General and Noisy Max. There is no distinction between the two in the graph view, as they differ only in the way their conditional probability distributions are specified. See Noisy nodes section for more information.

Deterministic nodes, drawn as double ovals, denote deterministic variables, i.e., either constant values or values that are algebraically determined from the states of their parents.

Decision nodes, drawn as rectangles, denote variables that are under decision maker's control and are used to model decision maker's options.

Value nodes (also called Utility nodes), drawn as hexagons, denote variables that contain information about the decision maker's goals and objectives. They express the decision maker's preferences over the outcomes over their direct predecessors.

There are two basic types of value nodes: Utility and Multi-Attribute Utility. There is no distinction among the two in the graph view, as they differ only in the way they specify the utility functions. Utility nodes specify the numerical valuation of the utility and Multi-Attribute Utility nodes specify the way simple Utility nodes combines to form Multi-Attribute Utility. The Multi-Attribute Utility nodes can have only Utility nodes as predecessors. See Multiple Utility Nodes section for more information.

Submodel nodes, drawn as rounded rectangles, denote submodels, i.e., conceptually related groups of variables.

To learn how to create nodes and arcs between them, see the tutorial section on Bayesian networks or the tutorial section on influence diagrams