Kybernetika

Four notions of factorizability over arbitrary directed graphs are examined. For acyclic graphs they coincide and are identical with the usual factorization of probability distributions in Markov models. Relations between the factorizations over circuits are described in detail including nontrivial counterexamples. Restrictions on the cardinality of state spaces cause that a factorizability with respect to some special cyclic graphs implies the factorizability with respect to their, more simple, strict edge-subgraphs. This gives sometimes the possibility to break circuits and get back to the acyclic, well-understood case.