Patent ID: 8924317

Claim:
An information processing apparatus, comprising: circuitry configured to: determine, based on an assumption that a factor that could cause a state transition in a state transition model occurs and the state transition takes place as a result of an occurrence of the factor, an information amount gain, which is an information amount obtained by causing the factor to occur regarding a causal relationship between the factor and the state transition and observing a result thereof; determine an inter-distribution distance indicating a divergence between a probability distribution of a base probability as a probability with which the state transition takes place in a predetermined state and a probability distribution of a factor conditional probability as a probability with which a predetermined factor occurs and the state transition takes place in the predetermined state as a causal relationship amount indicating a degree of the causal relationship between the predetermined factor and the state transition in the predetermined state; cause the predetermined factor to occur to determine a difference between the causal relationship amount after observing a result thereof and the causal relationship amount before the predetermined factor occurs as the information amount gain; determine an evaluation value to evaluate effectiveness of causing each of the factors to occur based on the information amount gain to acquire the causal relationship between the factor and the state transition; and decide the factor to be occurred based on the evaluation value.