6,596 research outputs found
kLog: A Language for Logical and Relational Learning with Kernels
We introduce kLog, a novel approach to statistical relational learning.
Unlike standard approaches, kLog does not represent a probability distribution
directly. It is rather a language to perform kernel-based learning on
expressive logical and relational representations. kLog allows users to specify
learning problems declaratively. It builds on simple but powerful concepts:
learning from interpretations, entity/relationship data modeling, logic
programming, and deductive databases. Access by the kernel to the rich
representation is mediated by a technique we call graphicalization: the
relational representation is first transformed into a graph --- in particular,
a grounded entity/relationship diagram. Subsequently, a choice of graph kernel
defines the feature space. kLog supports mixed numerical and symbolic data, as
well as background knowledge in the form of Prolog or Datalog programs as in
inductive logic programming systems. The kLog framework can be applied to
tackle the same range of tasks that has made statistical relational learning so
popular, including classification, regression, multitask learning, and
collective classification. We also report about empirical comparisons, showing
that kLog can be either more accurate, or much faster at the same level of
accuracy, than Tilde and Alchemy. kLog is GPLv3 licensed and is available at
http://klog.dinfo.unifi.it along with tutorials
ExplainIt! -- A declarative root-cause analysis engine for time series data (extended version)
We present ExplainIt!, a declarative, unsupervised root-cause analysis engine
that uses time series monitoring data from large complex systems such as data
centres. ExplainIt! empowers operators to succinctly specify a large number of
causal hypotheses to search for causes of interesting events. ExplainIt! then
ranks these hypotheses, reducing the number of causal dependencies from
hundreds of thousands to a handful for human understanding. We show how a
declarative language, such as SQL, can be effective in declaratively
enumerating hypotheses that probe the structure of an unknown probabilistic
graphical causal model of the underlying system. Our thesis is that databases
are in a unique position to enable users to rapidly explore the possible causal
mechanisms in data collected from diverse sources. We empirically demonstrate
how ExplainIt! had helped us resolve over 30 performance issues in a commercial
product since late 2014, of which we discuss a few cases in detail.Comment: SIGMOD Industry Track 201
Constraint-based Causal Discovery for Non-Linear Structural Causal Models with Cycles and Latent Confounders
We address the problem of causal discovery from data, making use of the
recently proposed causal modeling framework of modular structural causal models
(mSCM) to handle cycles, latent confounders and non-linearities. We introduce
{\sigma}-connection graphs ({\sigma}-CG), a new class of mixed graphs
(containing undirected, bidirected and directed edges) with additional
structure, and extend the concept of {\sigma}-separation, the appropriate
generalization of the well-known notion of d-separation in this setting, to
apply to {\sigma}-CGs. We prove the closedness of {\sigma}-separation under
marginalisation and conditioning and exploit this to implement a test of
{\sigma}-separation on a {\sigma}-CG. This then leads us to the first causal
discovery algorithm that can handle non-linear functional relations, latent
confounders, cyclic causal relationships, and data from different (stochastic)
perfect interventions. As a proof of concept, we show on synthetic data how
well the algorithm recovers features of the causal graph of modular structural
causal models.Comment: Accepted for publication in Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial
Intelligence 201
Logic Programs as Declarative and Procedural Bias in Inductive Logic Programming
Machine Learning is necessary for the development of Artificial Intelligence, as pointed out by Turing in his 1950 article ``Computing Machinery and Intelligence''. It is in the same article that Turing suggested the use of computational logic and background knowledge for learning. This thesis follows a logic-based machine learning approach called Inductive Logic Programming (ILP), which is advantageous over other machine learning approaches in terms of relational learning and utilising background knowledge. ILP uses logic programs as a uniform representation for hypothesis, background knowledge and examples, but its declarative bias is usually encoded using metalogical statements. This thesis advocates the use of logic programs to represent declarative and procedural bias, which results in a framework of single-language representation.
We show in this thesis that using a logic program called the top theory as declarative bias leads to a sound and complete multi-clause learning system MC-TopLog. It overcomes the entailment-incompleteness of Progol, thus outperforms Progol in terms of predictive accuracies on learning grammars and strategies for playing Nim game. MC-TopLog has been applied to two real-world applications funded by Syngenta, which is an agriculture company.
A higher-order extension on top theories results in meta-interpreters, which allow the introduction of new predicate symbols. Thus the resulting ILP system Metagol can do predicate invention, which is an intrinsically higher-order logic operation. Metagol also leverages the procedural semantic of Prolog to encode procedural bias, so that it can outperform both its ASP version and ILP systems without an equivalent procedural bias in terms of efficiency and accuracy. This is demonstrated by the experiments on learning Regular, Context-free and Natural grammars. Metagol is also applied to non-grammar learning tasks involving recursion and predicate invention, such as learning a definition of staircases and robot strategy learning. Both MC-TopLog and Metagol are based on a -directed framework, which is different from other multi-clause learning systems based on Inverse Entailment, such as CF-Induction, XHAIL and IMPARO. Compared to another -directed multi-clause learning system TAL, Metagol allows the explicit form of higher-order assumption to be encoded in the form of meta-rules.Open Acces
Process Discovery on Deviant Traces and Other Stranger Things
As the need to understand and formalise business processes into a model has grown over the last years, the process discovery research field has gained more and more importance, developing two different classes of approaches to model representation: procedural and declarative. Orthogonally to this classification, the vast majority of works envisage the discovery task as a one-class supervised learning process guided by the traces that are recorded into an input log.
In this work instead, we focus on declarative processes and embrace the less-popular view of process discovery as a binary supervised learning task, where the input log reports both examples of the normal system execution, and traces representing a “stranger” behaviour according to the domain semantics. We therefore deepen how the valuable information brought by both these two sets can be extracted and formalised into a model that is “optimal” according to user-defined goals. Our approach, namely NegDis, is evaluated w.r.t. other relevant works in this field, and shows promising results regarding both the performance and the quality of the obtained solution
Ex2Vec: Characterizing Users and Items from the Mere Exposure Effect
The traditional recommendation framework seeks to connect user and content,
by finding the best match possible based on users past interaction. However, a
good content recommendation is not necessarily similar to what the user has
chosen in the past. As humans, users naturally evolve, learn, forget, get
bored, they change their perspective of the world and in consequence, of the
recommendable content. One well known mechanism that affects user interest is
the Mere Exposure Effect: when repeatedly exposed to stimuli, users' interest
tends to rise with the initial exposures, reaching a peak, and gradually
decreasing thereafter, resulting in an inverted-U shape. Since previous
research has shown that the magnitude of the effect depends on a number of
interesting factors such as stimulus complexity and familiarity, leveraging
this effect is a way to not only improve repeated recommendation but to gain a
more in-depth understanding of both users and stimuli. In this work we present
(Mere) Exposure2Vec (Ex2Vec) our model that leverages the Mere Exposure Effect
in repeat consumption to derive user and item characterization and track user
interest evolution. We validate our model through predicting future music
consumption based on repetition and discuss its implications for recommendation
scenarios where repetition is common
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