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Deal: Learning Bayesian Networks in R

Deal is a software package freely available (under the terms of the GNU General Public License) for use with R. It includes several methods for the analysis of Bayesian networks with variables of both discrete and/or continuous types. We restrict ourselves to conditionally Gaussian networks. Construction of priors for network parameters is supported and these parameters can be learned from (complete) data. The network score is used as a metric to compare different networks and forms the basis of a heuristic search strategy to learn the structure of the network. In addition, methods for simulation of datasets with a given dependency structure is implemented. Deal has the possibility to read and save .net files (readnet, savenet), which can be used by eg. Hugin.

Deal has been developed by Susanne G. Bøttcher and Claus Dethlefsen, supported by Novo Nordisk A/S.

Deal is part of the gR project.

Documentation

You should study the paper:

Susanne G. Bøttcher and Claus Dethlefsen. deal: A Package for Learning Bayesian Networks. Journal of Statistical Software, 8(20), 2003. Available here.

Also, the deal reference manual is available.

Mailing list

Also, visit the Deal Yahoo group. The mailing list is also available through gmane and is called gmane.comp.lang.r.deal.

Download

The easiest way to install "deal" is to start R and then execute the R command:

R> install.packages("deal",depend=TRUE)

The files on CRAN are the latest. Older versions are in the Download directory. Source files (for install under Unix) are named deal_x.y-z.tar.gz and binary distributions (for Windows) are named deal_x.y-z.zip, where x,y,z determines the version number.

Installation

You will need a recent (>= R 2.0) version of R. Windows users can install R by running the file rw????.exe.

The easiest way to install "deal" is to start R and then execute the R command:

R> install.packages("deal",depend=TRUE)

Windows install

In the R menu, choose Packages|Install package from local zip file. Then, select deal_x.y-z.zip.

Unix install

At a unix prompt, call

R CMD INSTALL deal_x.y-z.tar.gz

to install to the default library. To install to another directory (/user/dethlef/Lib, say), call

R CMD INSTALL deal_x.y-z.tar.gz -l /user/dethlef/Lib

Inwoking Deal

In your R session, call

R> library(deal)

if Deal is installed in the default library section. Otherwise, call

R> library(deal,lib.loc="/user/dethlef/Lib")

if Deal is installed in /user/dethlef/Lib.

When Deal is loaded, you should see a message like

-------------------------------------------------------------
Learning Bayesian Networks with Mixed Variables
deal, version 1.2-17 is now loaded
Copyright (C) 2002-2004, Susanne G. Bøttcher and Claus Dethlefsen
Maintained by Claus Dethlefsen  
Webpage: http://www.math.aau.dk/novo/deal 

Built: R 1.9.1; i386-pc-mingw32; 2004-08-05 14:03:55; windows 
-------------------------------------------------------------

To get started with Deal, try

R> demo(rats)
R> demo(ksl)
R> demo(reinis)

All functions are documented in the online help, eg.

R> help(network)