Penniless propagation in join trees

This paper presents non-random algorithms for approximate computation in Ba yesian networks. They are based on the use of probability trees to represen t probability potentials, using the Kullback-Leibler cross entropy as a mea sure of the error of the approximation. Different alternatives are presente d and tested in several experiments with difficult propagation problems. Th e results show how it is possible to find good approximations in short time compared with Hugin algorithm. (C) 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.