Logical Reduction of Metarules

International audienceMany forms of inductive logic programming (ILP) use metarules, second-order Horn clauses, to define the structure of learnable programs and thus the hypothesis space. Deciding which metarules to use for a given learning task is a major open problem and is a trade-off between efficiency and expressivity: the hypothesis space grows given more metarules, so we wish to use fewer metarules, but if we use too few metarules then we lose expressivity. In this paper, we study whether fragments of metarules can be logically reduced to minimal finite subsets. We consider two traditional forms of logical reduction: subsumption and entailment. We also consider a new reduction technique called derivation reduction, which is based on SLD-resolution. We compute reduced sets of metarules for fragments relevant to ILP and theoretically show whether these reduced sets are reductions for more general infinite fragments. We experimentally compare learning with reduced sets of metarules on three domains: Michalski trains, string transformations, and game rules. In general, derivation reduced sets of metarules outperform subsumption and entailment reduced sets, both in terms of predictive accuracies and learning times

A Posthumous Contribution by {Larry Wos}: {E}xcerpts from an Unpublished Column

International audienceShortly before Larry Wos passed away, he sent a manuscript for discussion to Sophie Tourret, the editor of the AAR newsletter. We present excerpts from this final manuscript, put it in its historic context and explain its relevance for today’s research in automated reasoning

Generalized Completeness for {SOS} Resolution and its Application to a New Notion of Relevance

International audienceWe prove the SOS strategy for first-order resolution to be refutationally complete on a clause set $N$ and set-of-support $S$ if and only if there exists a clause in $S$ that occurs in a resolution refutation from $N\cup S$. This strictly generalizes and sharpens the original completeness result requiring $N$ to be satisfiable. The generalized SOS completeness result supports automated reasoning on a new notion of relevance aiming at capturing the support of a clause in the refutation of a clause set. A clause $C$ is relevant for refuting a clause set $N$ if $C$ occurs in every refutation of $N$. The clause $C$ is semi-relevant if it occurs in some refutation, i.e., if there exists an SOS refutation with set-of-support $S = \{C\}$ from $N\setminus \{C\}$. A clause that does not occur in any refutation from $N$ is irrelevant, i.e., it is not semi-relevant. Our new notion of relevance separates clauses in a proof that are ultimately needed from clauses that may be replaced by different clauses. In this way it provides insights towards proof explanation in refutations beyond existing notions such as that of an unsatisfiable core

A Unifying Splitting Framework

International audienceAVATAR is an elegant and effective way to split clauses in a saturation prover using a SAT solver. But is it refutationally complete? And how does it relate to other splitting architectures? To answer these questions, we present a unifying framework that extends a saturation calculus (e.g., superposition) with splitting and embeds the result in a prover guided by a SAT solver. The framework also allows us to study locking, a subsumption-like mechanism based on the current propositional model. Various architectures are instances of the framework, including AVATAR, labeled splitting, and SMT with quantifiers

Abduction in {EL} via Translation to {FOL}

International audienceWe present a technique for performing TBox abduction in the description logic EL. The input problem is converted into first-order formulas on which a prime implicate generation technique is applied, then EL hypotheses are reconstructed by combining the generated positive and negative implicates

Connection-Minimal Abduction in EL\mathcal{EL} via Translation to {FOL}

International audienceAbduction in description logics finds extensions of a knowledge base to make it entail an observation. As such, it can be used to explain why the observation does not follow, to repair incomplete knowledge bases, and to provide possible explanations for unexpected observations. We consider TBox abduction in the lightweight description logic EL , where the observation is a concept inclusion and the background knowledge is a TBox, i.e., a set of concept inclusions. To avoid useless answers, such problems usually come with further restrictions on the solution space and/or minimality criteria that help sort the chaff from the grain. We argue that existing minimality notions are insufficient, and introduce connection minimality. This criterion follows Occam’s razor by rejecting hypotheses that use concept inclusions unrelated to the problem at hand. We show how to compute a special class of connection-minimal hypotheses in a sound and complete way. Our technique is based on a translation to first-order logic, and constructs hypotheses based on prime implicates. We evaluate a prototype implementation of our approach on ontologies from the medical domain

Connection-Minimal Abduction in {E}L via Translation to {FOL} (Extended Abstract)

International audienceAbduction in description logics finds extensions of a knowledge base to make it entail an observation. As such, it can be used to explain why the observation does not follow, to repair incomplete knowledge bases, and to provide possible explanations for unexpected observations. We consider TBox abduction in the lightweight description logic EL , where the observation is a concept inclusion and the background knowledge is a TBox, i.e., a set of concept inclusions. To avoid useless answers, such problems usually come with further restrictions on the solution space and/or minimality criteria that help sort the chaff from the grain. We argue that existing minimality notions are insufficient, and introduce connection minimality. This criterion follows Occam’s razor by rejecting hypotheses that use concept inclusions unrelated to the problem at hand. We show how to compute a special class of connection-minimal hypotheses in a sound and complete way. Our technique is based on a translation to first-order logic, and constructs hypotheses based on prime implicates. We evaluate a prototype implementation of our approach on ontologies from the medical domain

Connection-minimal Abduction in EL via Translation to FOL -- Technical Report

Abduction in description logics finds extensions of a knowledge base to makeit entail an observation. As such, it can be used to explain why theobservation does not follow, to repair incomplete knowledge bases, and toprovide possible explanations for unexpected observations. We consider TBoxabduction in the lightweight description logic EL, where the observation is aconcept inclusion and the background knowledge is a TBox, i.e., a set ofconcept inclusions. To avoid useless answers, such problems usually come withfurther restrictions on the solution space and/or minimality criteria that helpsort the chaff from the grain. We argue that existing minimality notions areinsufficient, and introduce connection minimality. This criterion followsOccam's razor by rejecting hypotheses that use concept inclusions unrelated tothe problem at hand. We show how to compute a special class ofconnection-minimal hypotheses in a sound and complete way. Our technique isbased on a translation to first-order logic, and constructs hypotheses based onprime implicates. We evaluate a prototype implementation of our approach onontologies from the medical domain.<br

Superposition with First-class {B}ooleans and Inprocessing Clausification

International audienceWe present a complete superposition calculus for first-order logic with an interpreted Boolean type. Our motivation is to lay the foundation for refutationally complete calculi in more expressive logics with Booleans, such as higher-order logic, and to make superposition work efficiently on problems that would be obfuscated when using clausification as preprocessing. Working directly on formulas, our calculus avoids the costly axiomatic encoding of the theory of Booleans into first-order logic and offers various ways to interleave clausification with other derivation steps. We evaluate our calculus using the Zipperposition theorem prover, and observe that, with no tuning of parameters, our approach is on a par with the state-of-the-art approach

Superposition for Full Higher-order Logic

International audienceWe recently designed two calculi as stepping stones towards superposition for full higher-order logic: Boolean-free $\lambda$-superposition and superposition for first-order logic with interpreted Booleans. Stepping on these stones, we finally reach a sound and refutationally complete calculus for higher-order logic with polymorphism, extensionality, Hilbert choice, and Henkin semantics. In addition to the complexity of combining the calculus’s two predecessors, new challenges arise from the interplay between $\lambda$-terms and Booleans. Our implementation in Zipperposition outperforms all other higher-order theorem provers and is on a par with an earlier, pragmatic prototype of Booleans in Zipperposition