[SciPy-user] is there any plan to import BNT(bayesian network toolkit) from matlab?

[Karl Young]

>We have a master's student who is interested in doing the initial
>port, and I hope we can form a productive collaboration: he has the
>time and you guys have a vision.  It would be helpful if you could
>either discuss the idea further here, or expand the wiki page, so that
>I can give him a concrete plan to start with.
>
>Amongs other things, I'd like to know which parts are most important
>to port (i.e. which parts are not already provided by other
>libraries), how we should refactor the interface to best make use of
>Python's strong object oriented facilities (maybe this will develop
>intuitively), and which references to use in docstrings (Chris
>Bishop's book looks like a good place to start?).
>
>Regards
>Stéfan
>  
>
Stefan, that sounds great. After talking with Jarrod and David yesterday 
I'm getting a better feel for how the port might fit into the overall 
SciPy picture (initially as part of the learn scikit). One of the things 
I thought was great about the toolkit was Kevin Murphy's overarching 
view of graphical models, e.g. Hidden Markov Models are a particular 
case of his general scheme. But David made the important point yesterday 
that if you wanted to use HMM's for something like speech processing 
using such a general approach would be inefficient and it would be 
better to use more specific code (currently existing in SciPy I think). 
So one of the first tasks, consistent with what you describe, is to 
generate a priority list for the port, perhaps looking for overlapping 
functionality in SciPy and leaving that stuff out of the initial port. 
I'll start on that (and we can try to reconcile that with what anyone 
else comes up with) and I guess I can post my thoughts on the priority 
list on the wiki. I think I should leave decisions about the interface 
to those more expert in that (I'll be happy to start coding once those 
decisions are made though). What is the title of Chris Bishop's book ?


-- 

Karl Young
Center for Imaging of Neurodegenerative Diseases, UCSF          
VA Medical Center (114M)              Phone:  (415) 221-4810 x3114  lab        
4150 Clement Street                   FAX:    (415) 668-2864
San Francisco, CA 94121               Email:  karl young at ucsf edu