Evidence as Opinions of Experts (1304.3093v1)

Abstract: We describe a viewpoint on the Dempster/Shafer 'Theory of Evidence', and provide an interpretation which regards the combination formulas as statistics of the opinions of "experts". This is done by introducing spaces with binary operations that are simpler to interpret or simpler to implement than the standard combination formula, and showing that these spaces can be mapped homomorphically onto the Dempster/Shafer theory of evidence space. The experts in the space of "opinions of experts" combine information in a Bayesian fashion. We present alternative spaces for the combination of evidence suggested by this viewpoint.