[Thinking Cap] for probabilistic propositional logic+Important reading assignment for next class

["Subbarao Kambhampati" <rao@asu.edu>]

See if you can answer these on the blog

0.  If I have n propositions, how many possible clauses are there? (Assume that clauses of the form A V A are automatically simplified to A).
     Does this help in convincing you that the resolution theoremproving search procedure is *complete* in that it will terminate whether or not
     the theorem you are trying to prove actually holds?

1.
We saw that propositional logic is monotonic and that real world
requried "defeasible" or "non-monotonic" reasoning. Is probabilistic
reasoning 
    monotonic or non-monotonic? Explain.

2. You obviously heard the two words "Probability" and "statistics". What is the difference between them? (or are they basically synonyms?)

3.
We made a big point about the need for representing joint distribution
compactly. Much of elementary probability/statistics handles 
   
continuous and multi-valued variables, where specifying the
distribution of the single variable itself will need a huge number of
numbers.
    How is this normally side-stepped in elementary probability?

[Reading assignment] Make sure to read/review chapter 13 which reviews elementary probability.

Rao