Order Effects of Measurements in Multi-Agent Hypothesis Testing
All propositions from the set of events for an agent in a multi-agent system might not be simultaneously verifiable. In this paper, we revisit the concepts of event-state-operation structure and relationship of incompatibility from literature and use them as a tool to study the algebraic structure of the set of events. We present an example from multi-agent hypothesis testing where the set of events does not form a Boolean algebra but forms an ortholattice. A possible construction of a 'noncommutative probability space', accounting for incompatible events (events which cannot be simultaneously verified) is discussed. As a possible decision-making problem in such a probability space, we consider the binary hypothesis testing problem. We present two approaches to this decision-making problem. In the first approach, we represent the available data as coming from measurements modeled via projection valued measures (PVM) and retrieve the results of the underlying detection problem solved using classical probability models. In the second approach, we represent the measurements using positive operator valued measures (POVM). We prove that the minimum probability of error achieved in the second approach is the same as in the first approach.
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