On June 23rd, 2003 - we have released new versions of the
Hugin
Graphical User Interface (v6.3) and Hugin Decision Engine (v6.1).
The main new features of this release
are:
* Data conflict analysis
* Case files
* Thread-safe Hugin Decision Engine
* User specified data preprocessing plugins
* Parameter learning wizard
* Various improvements of Hugin Graphical User Interface
Data conflict analysis is the
activity of detecting, tracing, and
resolving possible conflicts among observations of variable values.
The Hugin Graphical User Interface and Hugin Decision Engine now
support identification of potential conflicts in observations and
hypothesis driven conflict resolution.
The Hugin Graphical User Interface and Hugin Decision Engine now
support the use of case files. Case files make it possible for the
user to save evidence entered in a domain in a case file for easy
reload.
The Hugin Decision Engine has been extended to support safe usage in a
multi-threaded application. It is now possible to safely use the Hugin
Decision Engine in multi-threaded applications where threads process
their own local domains or applications where threads access a common
domain. In the last scenario, it is necessary to explicitly ensure
mutual exclusion.
Support for loading user specified preprocessing plugins have been
included in the learning wizards of the Hugin Graphical User
Interface. This enables the user to use her own data preprocessing
functionality directly in the Hugin Graphical User Interface.
The functionality of the Hugin Graphical User Interface has been
extended with an additional Learning Wizard - the EM
Learning Wizard.
The EM Learning Wizard increases the user support for learning the
parameters of Bayesian networks from data. The EM Learning Wizard
includes support for data acquisition (database connectivity via ODBC,
interface to Oracle databases, and plain text files), data
preprocessing, specification of domain expert knowledge on parameters,
generation of randomized conditional probability distributions, etc.
The Hugin Graphical User Interface has been improved with various new
features. This includes:
* Import of network information (groups, colors, node sizes, etc).
This is very useful in documentation of networks, but also for
structural learning of Bayesian networks, where loading and saving
structural constraints is now supported.
* Curved and piecewise linear arrows between nodes. This makes it
possible to avoid having arrows and nodes overlap.
* View the junction tree structure (useful for conflict analysis).
* Individual node sizes
* Improved print functionalities (e.g multi-page networks and
selection of printer).
Finally, the heuristic measure used by the Hugin Decision Engine as
part of the total-weight triangulation has been improved to give
better results on large networks.
User
feedback form
Hugin Expert A/S has a continuous interest in the opinion of the users
of Hugin software and we wish to improve our software in line with our
customers needs. For this reason the Hugin Graphical User Interface
has been extended with a questionnaire, which we kindly ask our users
to complete. The user feedback will help us to improve our software
and to guide the development of the software and keep it exciting to
use. We sincerely hope that many of you will spend a few minutes in
helping us improving ourselves.