REPRESENTATION OF IRRELEVANCE RELATIONS

Suppose that a variable X_i is associated with a credal set $K(X_i\vert\mbox{pa}(X_i))$ and that the variables W_i are judged irrelevant to X_i given $\mbox{pa}(X_i)$. To represent the irrelevance relation, it is necessary to expand each constraint $C_l \left[ p(X_i\vert\mbox{pa}(X_i)) \right]$ into a family of constraints $C_l \left[ p(X_i\vert\mbox{pa}(X_i), W_i = W_{ij}) \right]$. Note that a new constraint is added for each value of W_i.