Publications

B-Course is a web-based interactive tutorial on Bayesian dependence
modeling.  However, B-Course is more than just a tutorial: it is also
a free data analysis tool that makes it possible for you to use your
own data in the tutorial. Consequently, B-Course can be used as an
analysis tool for any research where dependence modeling is of
interest.  B-Course extracts both Bayesian Belief Network models and
Causal models (as discussed in Judea Pearl's recent book "Causality -
Models, Reasoning and Inference") from a given data set, and supports
two graphical user interfaces for inference with the constructed
Bayesian networks.

In more detail: B-Course allows missing data, automatically
discretizes continuous variables, builds Bayesian Belief Networks,
Naive Causal Models (no latent variable assumption) and Restricted
Latent Variable Causal Models. The system provides both a "vanilla"
user interface for Bayesian inference in the constructed Bayesian
network, and a more sophisticated graphical user interface for browsers
supporting Java. B-Course also supports exportation of the constructed
models in Hugin Lite format, and offers a library of tutorial material
about the Bayesian approach to dependency modeling.

B-Course is offered free for educational and research purposes only.

B-Course is a service, not a program that is downloaded. Thus it is
used via a web browser and all the computationally intensive tasks are
performed at the B-Course server farm. Although a considerable effort
has been put in making B-Course to work with all Netscape and
Explorer browser versions, it cannot be guaranteed that B-Course works
with very early versions of browser software.

B-Course can be found at

http://b-course.cs.helsinki.fi/

B-Course Service is hosted by Complex Systems Computation Group (CoSCo),
Department of Computer Science, University of Helsinki - Home of Linux.