Probabilistic automaton

In mathematics and computer science, the probabilistic automaton (PA) is a generalization of the non-deterministic finite automaton; it includes the probability of a given transition into the transition function, turning it into a transition matrix or stochastic matrix. Thus, the probabilistic automaton generalizes the concept of a Markov chain or subshift of finite type. The languages recognized by probabilistic automata are called stochastic languages; these include the regular languages as a subset. The number of stochastic languages is uncountable.