Uncertainty and Nondeterministic are two popular terms used in Artificial Intelligent, Modeling, Game Theory, Theory of languages and many other disciplines. I would like to know the difference between these two terms and the contexts that they are used in. A formal definition or even a taxonomy would be a great help too.
Thanks
- A process transforms an initial state into a final state of some system.
- The states may have an uncertainty (such as a measument error, or probabilities of some set of discrete outcomes).
- A process is said to be deterministic if an initial state with no uncertainty always leads to the same final state, also with no uncertainty.
- A nondeterministic process always leads to a final state with some uncertainty, even if one always starts with an initial state void of any uncertainty.
Hence:
Uncertainty is a property of the possible states of a system, while
determinacy is a property of processes that map initial states onto the final ones.
I have used the terms "system", "state", "process" in an abstract way; there are numerous (and varied) practical realizations of this scheme with all possibilities that it offers.
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