6533b7d6fe1ef96bd12663eb

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Estimation of Uncertain Relations between Indeterminate Temporal Points

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description

Many database applications need to manage temporal information and sometimes to estimate relations between indeterminate temporal points. Indeterminacy means that we do not know exactly when a particular event happened. In this case, temporal points can be defined within some temporal intervals. Measurements of these intervals are not necessarily based on exactly synchronized clocks, and, therefore, possible measurement errors need to be taken into account when estimating the temporal relation between two indeterminate points. This paper presents an approach to calculate the probabilities of the basic relations (before, at the same time, and after) between any two indeterminate temporal points. We assume that the probability mass functions of the values of these two temporal points and the maximum measurement difference between these values are known. Using these assumptions we derive formulas for the lower and the upper bounds of the probabilities of the basic relations between two indeterminate temporal points.