17,093 research outputs found
Generalisation Through Negation and Predicate Invention
The ability to generalise from a small number of examples is a fundamental
challenge in machine learning. To tackle this challenge, we introduce an
inductive logic programming (ILP) approach that combines negation and predicate
invention. Combining these two features allows an ILP system to generalise
better by learning rules with universally quantified body-only variables. We
implement our idea in NOPI, which can learn normal logic programs with
predicate invention, including Datalog programs with stratified negation. Our
experimental results on multiple domains show that our approach can improve
predictive accuracies and learning times.Comment: Under peer-revie
Sketched Answer Set Programming
Answer Set Programming (ASP) is a powerful modeling formalism for
combinatorial problems. However, writing ASP models is not trivial. We propose
a novel method, called Sketched Answer Set Programming (SkASP), aiming at
supporting the user in resolving this issue. The user writes an ASP program
while marking uncertain parts open with question marks. In addition, the user
provides a number of positive and negative examples of the desired program
behaviour. The sketched model is rewritten into another ASP program, which is
solved by traditional methods. As a result, the user obtains a functional and
reusable ASP program modelling her problem. We evaluate our approach on 21 well
known puzzles and combinatorial problems inspired by Karp's 21 NP-complete
problems and demonstrate a use-case for a database application based on ASP.Comment: 15 pages, 11 figures; to appear in ICTAI 201
Learning programs by learning from failures
We describe an inductive logic programming (ILP) approach called learning
from failures. In this approach, an ILP system (the learner) decomposes the
learning problem into three separate stages: generate, test, and constrain. In
the generate stage, the learner generates a hypothesis (a logic program) that
satisfies a set of hypothesis constraints (constraints on the syntactic form of
hypotheses). In the test stage, the learner tests the hypothesis against
training examples. A hypothesis fails when it does not entail all the positive
examples or entails a negative example. If a hypothesis fails, then, in the
constrain stage, the learner learns constraints from the failed hypothesis to
prune the hypothesis space, i.e. to constrain subsequent hypothesis generation.
For instance, if a hypothesis is too general (entails a negative example), the
constraints prune generalisations of the hypothesis. If a hypothesis is too
specific (does not entail all the positive examples), the constraints prune
specialisations of the hypothesis. This loop repeats until either (i) the
learner finds a hypothesis that entails all the positive and none of the
negative examples, or (ii) there are no more hypotheses to test. We introduce
Popper, an ILP system that implements this approach by combining answer set
programming and Prolog. Popper supports infinite problem domains, reasoning
about lists and numbers, learning textually minimal programs, and learning
recursive programs. Our experimental results on three domains (toy game
problems, robot strategies, and list transformations) show that (i) constraints
drastically improve learning performance, and (ii) Popper can outperform
existing ILP systems, both in terms of predictive accuracies and learning
times.Comment: Accepted for the machine learning journa
Induction of First-Order Decision Lists: Results on Learning the Past Tense of English Verbs
This paper presents a method for inducing logic programs from examples that
learns a new class of concepts called first-order decision lists, defined as
ordered lists of clauses each ending in a cut. The method, called FOIDL, is
based on FOIL (Quinlan, 1990) but employs intensional background knowledge and
avoids the need for explicit negative examples. It is particularly useful for
problems that involve rules with specific exceptions, such as learning the
past-tense of English verbs, a task widely studied in the context of the
symbolic/connectionist debate. FOIDL is able to learn concise, accurate
programs for this problem from significantly fewer examples than previous
methods (both connectionist and symbolic).Comment: See http://www.jair.org/ for any accompanying file
The PITA System: Tabling and Answer Subsumption for Reasoning under Uncertainty
Many real world domains require the representation of a measure of
uncertainty. The most common such representation is probability, and the
combination of probability with logic programs has given rise to the field of
Probabilistic Logic Programming (PLP), leading to languages such as the
Independent Choice Logic, Logic Programs with Annotated Disjunctions (LPADs),
Problog, PRISM and others. These languages share a similar distribution
semantics, and methods have been devised to translate programs between these
languages. The complexity of computing the probability of queries to these
general PLP programs is very high due to the need to combine the probabilities
of explanations that may not be exclusive. As one alternative, the PRISM system
reduces the complexity of query answering by restricting the form of programs
it can evaluate. As an entirely different alternative, Possibilistic Logic
Programs adopt a simpler metric of uncertainty than probability. Each of these
approaches -- general PLP, restricted PLP, and Possibilistic Logic Programming
-- can be useful in different domains depending on the form of uncertainty to
be represented, on the form of programs needed to model problems, and on the
scale of the problems to be solved. In this paper, we show how the PITA system,
which originally supported the general PLP language of LPADs, can also
efficiently support restricted PLP and Possibilistic Logic Programs. PITA
relies on tabling with answer subsumption and consists of a transformation
along with an API for library functions that interface with answer subsumption
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