/*
 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one
 * or more contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file
 * distributed with this work for additional information
 * regarding copyright ownership.  The ASF licenses this file
 * to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the
 * "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance
 * with the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
 *
 *   http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 *
 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing,
 * software distributed under the License is distributed on an
 * "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY
 * KIND, either express or implied.  See the License for the
 * specific language governing permissions and limitations
 * under the License.
 */

package org.apache.samoa.moa.classifiers.rules.core.voting;

import org.apache.samoa.moa.MOAObject;

/**
 * ErrorWeightedVote interface for weighted votes based on estimates of errors.
 * 
 * @author Joao Duarte (jmduarte@inescporto.pt)
 * @version $Revision: 1 $
 */
public interface ErrorWeightedVote {

  /**
   * Adds a vote and the corresponding error for the computation of the weighted vote and respective weighted error.
   * 
   * @param vote
   *          a vote returned by a classifier
   * @param error
   *          the error associated to the vote
   */
  public void addVote(double[] vote, double error);

  /**
   * Computes the weighted vote. Also updates the weights of the votes.
   * 
   * @return the weighted vote
   */
  public double[] computeWeightedVote();

  /**
   * Returns the weighted error.
   * 
   * @pre computeWeightedVote()
   * @return the weighted error
   */
  public double getWeightedError();

  /**
   * Return the weights error.
   * 
   * @pre computeWeightedVote()
   * @return the weights
   */
  public double[] getWeights();

  /**
   * The number of votes added so far.
   * 
   * @return the number of votes
   */
  public int getNumberVotes();

  /**
   * Creates a copy of the object
   * 
   * @return copy of the object
   */
  public MOAObject copy();

  public ErrorWeightedVote getACopy();
}