Proof of the correctness of EMYCIN sequential propagation under conditional independence assumptions

In this paper, we prove that, under the assumption of conditional independence, the EMYCIN formula for sequential propagation can be derived strictly from the definition of the certainty factor according to probability theory. J.B. Adams (1984) and S. Schocken (1988) have proved that the EMYCIN formula for parallel propagation is partially consistent with probability theory. Our result supplements their contributions and, together with theirs, explains why the EMYCIN certainty factor model works reasonably well