Chapter 5


Structured knowledge
representation"
Basanta  Joshi,  PhD    
[email protected]    
Lecture  notes  can  be  downloaded  from    
www.basantajoshi.com.np    
 Knowledge Definition!

Ø “The fact or condition of knowing something with

familiarity gained through experience or
association.” (Webster’s Dictionary, 1988)(Knowing
something via seeing, hearing, touching, feeling, and
tasting.)
Ø “The fact or condition of being aware of something” .
(Ex. Sun is hot, balls are round, sky is blue,…)
 Knowledge Storing"

Natural language for people

Ø Symbols for computer: a number or
character string that represents an object or
idea (Internal representation of the
knowledge).
Ø The core concepts: mapping from facts to an
internal computer representation and also to
a form that people can understand.
Building a Knowledge Base
(KB)!
•  KB is designed for grouping the various knowledge together in one
place. The KB is the central repository of information containing the
facts we know about objects and their relationships.
•  Knowledge engineering (knowledge acquisition): mapping the set of
knowledge in a particular problem domain and converting it into a
knowledge base.
•  Domain expert: who through years of experience, has gathered the
knowledge about how things work and relate to one another, and know
how to solve problems in his or her specialty.
Building a Knowledge Base
(KB)"

Knowledge engineer: who can take that domain

knowledge and represent it in a form for use by the
reasoning system. As an intermediary between the human
expert and the expert system, the knowledge engineer must
have good people skills as well as good technical skills.
A combination of questionnaires, interviews, and first-
hand observations are used to give the knowledge engineer
the deep understanding required to transform the expert’s
knowledge into facts and rules for the knowledge base.
Building a Knowledge Base
(KB)"

•  Neural networks could be trained to perform classification

and prediction tasks without going through the expensive
knowledge acquisition process.
•  Neural networks may not be easily converted to a symbolic
form, they most definitely are a knowledge base, because
they encode the knowledge implicit in the training data.
 Knowledge Representation!

Ø Simple facts or complex relationships

Ø Mathematical formulas or rules for natural
language syntax
Ø Associations between related concepts
Ø Inheritance hierarchies between classes of objects
Ø Knowledge is not a “one-size-fits-all” proposition.
 Properties for Knowledge
Representation Systems

!
•  The following properties should be possessed by a knowledge
representation system.
•  Representational Adequacy
•  -- the ability to represent the required knowledge;
•  Inferential Adequacy
•  - the ability to manipulate the knowledge represented to produce new
knowledge corresponding to that inferred from the original;
•  Inferential Efficiency
•  - the ability to direct the inferential mechanisms into the most productive
directions by storing appropriate guides;
•  Acquisitional Efficiency
•  - the ability to acquire new knowledge using automatic methods
wherever possible rather than reliance on human intervention.
•  To date no single system optimises all of the above
 Knowledge Representation Methods!

Effective knowledge representation methods:

Ø Easy to use.
Ø Easily modified and extended (changing the knowledge
manually or through automatic machine learning
techniques).
 Knowledge Representation
Methods"

Ø Procedural method
Ø Declarative method
Ø Relational method
Ø Hierarchical method
Ø Complex network graph
 Procedural representation!

Ø Encode facts and define the sequence of operations

step by step. (Hardcoded logic)
Ø The weakness: the knowledge and the
manipulation of that knowledge are inextricably
linked.
 Declarative method!

Overcoming the weakness of procedural

representation
Ø The states, facts, rules, and relationships are separated
declared.
Ø The separation of knowledge from the algorithm used to
manipulate or reason with that knowledge provides
advantages over procedural codes.
Ø Because the knowledge is explicitly represented, it can be
more easily modified.
Ø Separating the control logic and reasoning algorithms
from the knowledge allows us to write optimized and
reusable inferencing procedures.
Procedural vs Declarative
method!
 Hierarchical representation!

Used to represent inheritable knowledge.

Ø Inheritable knowledge: it centers on relationships
and shared attributes between kinds or classes of
objects.
Ø Hierarchical knowledge is best used to represent
“isa” relationships, where a general or abstract
type (ex, ball) is linked to more specific types
(rubber, golf, baseball, football) which inherit the
basic properties of the general type.
 Hierarchical representation"

Ø The strength of object inheritance allows for

compact representation of knowledge and allows
reasoning algorithm to process at different levels of
abstraction or granularity.
Ø The use of categories or types gives structure to
the world by grouping similar objects together.
Ø Using categories or clusters simplifies reasoning
by limiting the number of distinct things we have
to deal with. (reduce complexity)
 Hierarchical representation 

- Capturing knowledge!

Ø Knowing what to expect based on the elapsed time

from one event to another is often the hallmark of
intelligent behavior.
Ø Time concepts such as before, after, and during
are crucial to common-sense reasoning and
planning. Temporal logic is usually used to
represent and reason about time.
 Predicate Logic!

The use of formal logic as a primary knowledge

representation harkens back to the beginnings of AI
research.
Mathematical deduction based on logic, was a well-
known method of generating new knowledge from
existing knowledge.
 Predicate Logic!

•  Formal logic is a language with its own syntax,

which defines how to make sentences, and
corresponding semantics, which describe the
meaning of the sentences.
•  Sentences can be constructed using proposition
symbols (P, Q, R) and Boolean connectives, such
as conjunction (And), disjunction (Or), implication
(P implies Q).
•  Ex: if P and Q then R, the preceding rule, P and Q,
is called the premise or antecedent, and R is the
conclusion or consequent.
 Predicate Logic"

Modus Ponens: where given a rule, A implies B, if

A is true, we can infer that B is also true.
Predicate logic introduces the concept of
quantifiers, which allow us to refer to sets of
objects. Using objects, attributes, and relations, we
can represent almost any type of knowledge.
Two quantifiers: : universal
∀ (all objects of this
type have this attribute), : existential
∃ (there
exists some object that has the specified attribute)
 Predicate Logic"

Ex: “Minnesota is cold in the winter” can be

represented in three single parameter:
Place (Minnesota), Temperature(cold) and
Season(winter).
Or it can be represented a single relation:
Cold (Minnesota, winter), Winter(Minnesota, cold).
 Resolution!

Resolution is an algorithm for proving facts true or false by

virtue of contradiction. If we want to prove a theorem X is
true, we have to show that the negation of X is not true.
 Example of Resolution"

Suppose that we know the following two facts:

1. not feathers(Tweety) or bird(Tweety)
2. feathers(Tweety)
Sentence 1 states that either Tweety does not have
feathers or else Tweety is a bird. Sentence 2 states
that Tweety has feathers. To prove that Tweety is a
bird, we first add an assumption that is the negation
of that predicate, giving sentence 3:
3.not bird(tweety)
 Example of Resolution"

In sentence 1 and 2, not feathers(Tweety) and

feathers(Tweety) cancel each other out. Resolving sentences 1
and 2 produces the resolvant, sentence 4, which is added to
our fact set:
4. Bird(Tweety)
It is clear that sentences 3 and 4 cannot both be true, either
Tweety is a bird ot it is not. Thus, we have a contradition. WE
have just proved that our first assumption, not bird(Tweety), is
false, and the alternative, bird(Tweety), must be true
(Winston, 1993).
 Resolution"

If the clauses to be resolved are selected in

systematic ways, then resolution is guaranteed to
find a contradiction if one exists, although it may
take a long time to find.
 Unification!

Unification is a technique for taking two sentences in

predicate logic and finding a substitution that makes them
look the same.
lA variable can be replaced by a constant.
lA variable can be replaced by another variable.
lA variable can be replaced with a predicate, as long as the predicate
does not contain that variable.
 Example of unification!

Given the following set of predicates, let’s

explore how they can be unified:
¬ hates(X,Y)
¬ hates(George, broccoli)
¬ hates(Alex, spinach)
We could unify sentence 2 with 1 by binding
George to variable X, and broccoli to variable
Y. Similarly, we could bind Alex to X and
spinach to Y. Note that if the predicate names
were different, we could not unify these
predicates.
 Example of unification!

If we introduce a few more predicates, we can

explore more complex unifications:
4.hates(X, vegetable(Y))
5.hates(George, vegetable(Y))
6.hates(Z, broccoli)
We could unify sentence 6 with sentence 1 by
replacing variable X with variable Z and
variable Y with the constant broccoli. Sentence
4 and 5 could be unified with George bound to
X, and broccoli to variable Y.
 Unification using in Prolog"

A generalized version of the unification algorithm,

called match, is used in Prolog (Programming in
logic).
Facts are represented in Prolog by clauses, which
look like standard predicates, and declare things
which are unconditionally true.
Rules are clauses where the conclusion may be
true, provided that all of the clauses in the condition
part are true.
 Unification using in Prolog"

Prolog provides a built-in inferencing procedure,

based on resolution, for processing rules and
answering questions posed as goal clauses (Bratko,
1986).
Nowadays, most commercial implementations of
rule-based systems are written in c and c++.
A “GUI” for logic!
 Issues  in  Knowledge  RepresentaAon  
•  There  are  several  issues  that  must  be  considered  when  
represenAng  various  kinds  of  real-­‐world  knowledge.  
–  Important  AIributes  
–  RelaAonship  among  AIributes  
–  Inverses  
–  Existence  in  an  Isa  hierarchy    
–  Technique  for  reasoning  about  values  
–  Single-­‐valued  aIributes  
 Frames"

•  A frame is a collection of attributes, which defines

the state of an object and its relationship to other
frames (objects). But a frame is much more than
just a record or data structure containing data.
•  In AI, frames are called slot-filler data
representations. The slots are the data values, and
the fillers are attached procedures which are called
before, during (to compute the value of), or after
the slot’s value is changed.
•  Frames are often linked into a hierarchy to
represent has-part ans isa relationships.
 Example of Frames"

Vehicle
isa Wheels: Yes
isa

Automobile
Doors: Yes Cycle
Motor: Yes Wheels: <4
Wheels: 4
isa
isa
Spots Car Bicycle
Doors: 2 Motor: No
Size: Small Wheels: 2
instance
Corvette
License:xyz2
 Frame v.s. to OOP!

•  A Frame sounds very much like an object,

–  whose data members are the slots, and
–  whose methods are the attached procedures or daemons.
•  In some sense, any Java program is a frame-based
mechanism for knowledge representation.
•  It makes use of inheritance for isa relationships, and
containment or references for has-part relationships.
 Semantic Nets!

•  Semantic nets are used to define the meaning of a

concept by its relationships to other concepts.
•  A graph data structure is used, with nodes used to
hold concepts, and links with natural language
labels used to show the relatjonships.
•  A modern implementation of a semantic net is the
Knowledge Utility (KnU) developed by IBM.
(http://www.ibm.aqui.com)
Semantic Nets!
 Example of Semantic Net!
has-part
Vehicle Wheels

has-part
isa Motor
has-part
Doors Automobile
num-wheels 4
isa
Size
Small Sports Car 2
num-doors
instance

Corvette
Link Types in Semantic Network!
 Problem:!

•  Convert the given fopl in semantic Net:

•  MAMMAL (person)
•  INSTANCE (person, SAKTIGAUCHAN)
•  HASPART (perosn, Nose)
•  TEAM (NEPAL, SAKTIGAUCHAN)
•  UNIFORMCOLOR (WHITE, SAKTI GAUCHAN)
Solution!
 Conceptual Dependency (CD)"

●  CD theory was developed by Schank in 1973 to 1975 to

represent the meaning of NL sentences.
−  It helps in drawing inferences
−  It is independent of the language
●  CD representation of a sentence is not built using words in
the sentence rather built using conceptual primitives which
give the intended meanings of words.
●  CD provides structures and specific set of primitives from
which representation can be built.
 Primitive Acts of CD theory!
●  ATRANS Transfer of an abstract relationship (i.e. give)
●  PTRANS Transfer of the physical location of an object (e.g., go)
●  PROPEL Application of physical force to an object (e.g. push)
●  MOVE Movement of a body part by its owner (e.g. kick)
●  GRASP Grasping of an object by an action (e.g. throw)
●  INGEST Ingesting of an object by an animal (e.g. eat)
●  EXPEL Expulsion of something from the body of an animal
(e.g. cry)
●  MTRANS Transfer of mental information (e.g. tell)
●  MBUILD Building new information out of old (e.g decide)
●  SPEAK Producing of sounds (e.g. say)
●  ATTEND Focusing of a sense organ toward a stimulus
(e.g. listen)
 Conceptual category"

● There are four conceptual categories

−  ACT Actions {one of the CD primitives}

−  PP Objects {picture producers}
−  AA Modifiers of actions {action aiders}
−  PA Modifiers of PP’s {picture aiders}
 Example!

● I gave a book to the man. CD representation is as follows:

P O R man (to)
I ⇔ ATRANS ← book
I (from)

● It should be noted that this representation is same for

different saying with same meaning. For example
−  I gave the man a book,
−  The man got book from me,
−  The book was given to man by me etc.
 Few conventions"

● Arrows indicate directions of dependency

● Double arrow indicates two way link between actor and
action.
O – for the object case relation
R – for the recipient case relation
P – for past tense
D - destination
 Some of Conceptualizations of
CD"
●  Dependency structures are themselves conceptualization
and can serve as components of larger dependency
structures.
●  The dependencies among conceptualization correspond to
semantic relations among the underlying concepts.
●  We will list the most important ones allowed by CD.
●  Remaining can be seen from the book.
 Problems with CD
Representation!
● It is difficult to
−  construct original sentence from its corresponding CD representation.
−  CD representation can be used as a general model for knowledge
representation, because this theory is based on representation of
events as well as all the information related to events.
● Rules are to be carefully designed for each primitive action
in order to obtain semantically correct interpretation.
 Contd…!
● Many verbs may fall under different primitive ACTs, and it
becomes difficult to find correct primitive in the given
context.
● The CD representation becomes complex requiring lot of
storage for many simple actions.
● For example, the sentence “John bet Mike that Indian
cricket team will win incoming world cup” will require
huge CD structure.
 Script Structure!

● Scripts were introduced by Schank and Abelson introduced

in 1977 that used CD framework.
● The scripts are useful in describing certain stereotyped
situations such as going to theater
● It consists of set of slots containing default values along
with some information about the type of values similar to
frames.
● It differs from FS as the values of the slots in scripts must
be ordered and have more specialized roles.
● In real world situations, we see that event tends to occur in
known patterns because of clausal relationship to the
occurrence of events
 Script Components!
● Each script contains the following main components.
−  Entry Conditions: Must be satisfied before events in the script can
occur.
−  Results: Conditions that will be true after events in script occur.
−  Props: Slots representing objects involved in the events.
−  Roles: Persons involved in the events.
−  Track: Specific variation on more general pattern in the script.
Different tracks may share many components of the same script but
not all.
−  Scenes: The sequence of events that occur. Events are
represented in conceptual dependency form.
 Script : Play in theater Various Scenes

Scene 1: Going to theater

Track: Play in Theater
• P PTRANS P into theater
Props: • P ATTEND eyes to ticket counter
• Tickets
• Seat Scene 2: Buying ticket
• Play
• P PTRANS P to ticket counter
Roles: • P MTRANS (need a ticket) to TD
• Person (who wants to see a play) – P • TD ATRANS ticket to P
• Ticket distributor – TD
• Ticket checker – TC Scene 3: Going inside hall of theater and sitting
on a seat

Entry Conditions: • P PTRANS P into Hall of theater

• P wants to see a play • TC ATTEND eyes on ticket POSS_by P
• P has a money • TC MTRANS (showed seat) to P
• P PTRANS P to seat
• P MOVES P to sitting position
Results:
• P saw a play Scene 4: Watching a play
• P has less money
• P is happy (optional if he liked the • P ATTEND eyes on play
play) • P MBUILD (good moments) from play
Scene5: Exiting

• P PTRANS P out of Hall and theater

 Script Invocation!
● It must be activated based on its significance.
● If the topic is important, then the script should be opened.
● If a topic is just mentioned, then a pointer to that script could be
held.
● For example, given “John enjoyed the play in theater”, a script
“Play in Theater” suggested above is invoked.
● All implicit questions can be answered correctly.
● Here the significance of this script is high.
−  Did john go to theater?
−  Did he buy ticket?
−  Did he have money?
● If we have a sentence like “John went to theater to pick his
daughter”, then invoking this script will lead to many wrong
answers.
−  Here significance of the script theater is less.
● Getting significance from the story is not straightforward. However,
some heuristics can be applied to get the value.
 Advantages / Disadvantages of
Script!

● Advantages
−  Capable of predicting implicit events
−  Single coherent interpretation may be build up from a collection of
observations.
● Disadvantage
−  More specific (inflexible) and less general than frames.
−  Not suitable to represent all kinds of knowledge.
● To deal with inflexibility, smaller modules called memory
organization packets (MOP) can be combined in a way that
is appropriate for the situation.