Knowledge acquisition

Development cycle of a knowledge-based system

Knowledge acquisition

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 Plan of the lecture

Plan of the lecture

1 Development cycle of a knowledge-based system

2 Expert systems

3 Knowledge acquisition

4 Decision tables

5 Modern uses of rules: semantic web, business rules

6 Rules in Java

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 Plan of the lecture

Recommended reading for this lecture

D. Partridge, K.M. Hussain. Knowledge-based information

systems. London : McGraw-Hill, 1995, Ch.6,7. (development
cycle, decision tables)
E. Rich, K. Knight. Artificial Intelligence. McGraw Hill, 1991. Ch.
20.4 (Knowledge Acquisition).
Semantic web http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/
RuleML http://www.ruleml.org/
Business rules and Java Rules Engine API (JSR)
http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/J2SE/JavaRule.html

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Jess http://herzberg.ca.sandia.gov/jess/

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 Development cycle of a knowledge-based system

Development cycle of a knowledge-based system

1. Plan knowledge base (the content of the knowledge base,

relevant inputs and outputs, strategy for testing, knowledge
dictionary, concepts etc. are identified.)
2. Select domain experts and knowledge sources
3. Acquire (elicit) knowledge
4. Formulate and represent knowledge (knowledge is formulated
in the form suitable for inference)
5. Implement knowledge base (knowledge is encoded in
machine-readable form.)
6. Test knowledge base
depending on the results: continue with knowledge acquisition or
go to 7.
7. Systems test
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 Expert systems

Expert systems

An expert system is a production systems which simulates

behaviour of experts
For example: MYCIN (diagnosis of bacterial diseases, 1970s),
XCON (system for configuring VAX computers, 1978)
Typical example of knowledge-based systems in the 80s

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 Knowledge acquisition

Knowledge acquisition: non-automatic methods

Interviews with domain experts

(Extracting knowledge from a human is often called knowledge
elicitation)
Iterative process, hard to get right first time.
Human experts usually find it very difficult to state all the data
relevant for a given problem.

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 Knowledge acquisition

Knowledge acquisition: automatic and semi-automatic

methods (for expert systems)
Programs which compile dependency networks during interviews
with experts:
MOLE (Elsheman, 1988) works for systems which classify cases as
instances of fixed categories, such as a fixed number of possible
diagnoses. It builds an inference network similar to belief networks
we will see later in the module
SALT (Marcus and McDermott, 1989) works for open-ended sets of
solutions, such as design problems; builds a dependency network
and compiles into a set of production rules.
Programs using learning:
Learning decision diagrams from a set of prositive and negative
instances of a concept (e.g. when to approve a loan application)
Learning rules from a set of positive and negative instances
META-DENDRAL (Mitchell 1978) learned how to determine
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structure of complex chemical compounds

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 Decision tables

Particular technique: decision tables

A useful way of systematising knowledge preparatory to

representing it using production rules
can be compiled during interviews with experts or reading
manuals or example sets

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 Decision tables

Decision tables

A decision table has the following structure:

Conditions Decision rule

Condition stubs Condition entries
Action stubs Action entries
where condition stubs are criteria relevant for a decision, action
stubs are possible actions, condition entries are Y,N and - (should
be true, should be false, not relevant) and action entries are X (for
take this action) or blank.
A decision rule is represented by a vertical column of condition
and action entries.

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 Decision tables

Example

Rule 1 Rule 2 Rule 3 Rule 4 Rule 5 Else

cash Y Y Y N N
order > 100 Y N N - -
order ≥ 50 Y Y N - -
order < 50 N N Y - -
credit record good - - - Y N
give 20% discount X
give 10 % discount X
accept order X X
reject order X
exception report X

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 Decision tables

Example: rules

Rule 1: if cash and order > 100 then give 20% discount
Rule 2: if cash and 50 ≤ order ≤ 100 then give 10 % discount Rule
3: if cash and rder < 50 then accept order
Rule 4: if not cash and credit record good then accept order
Rule 5: if not cash and not credit record good then reject order
Else generate an exception report.

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 Modern uses of rules: semantic web, business rules

Semantic web

Aspiration: turn information available on the web into a huge

knowledge base (integrated, readable and usable by machines
...)
Formats for integration
Languages for representing knowledge
Ontology languages (description logics) in the following lecture

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 Modern uses of rules: semantic web, business rules

Rule ML

Rule Markup Language (RuleML): specifying Web interchange

format for rules
Motivation comes from various aspects of Semantic Web:
Rules marked up for e-commerce (business rules)
XML transformation rules
Rules used for declarative specification of web services
Intelligent agents using rules
XML-like specification for each ruleset: rule conditions, rule
conclusions, direction (backward, forward, bidirectional).

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 Modern uses of rules: semantic web, business rules

Business rules

A business rule is a statement that defines or constrains some

aspect of the business
Declarative, easy to modify; the idea is to separate dynamically
changing rules which may apply for example only in the sales
period from the application source code (for example on-line shop
or rental business)
Rules have a similar spirit to the discount example in the decision
table
Examples: car rental business on
http://www.businessrulesgroup.org/egsbrg.shtml

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 Rules in Java

Java Rule Engine API

Java Rule Engine API (JSR-94) is a lightweight programming

interface that constitutes a standard API for acquiring and using a
rule engine.
From the specification: ‘Addresses the community need to reduce
the cost associated with incorporating business logic within
applications and the community need to reduce the cost
associated with implementing platform-level business logic tools
and services.’

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javax.rules and javax.rules.admin packages.

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 Rules in Java

Jess

Jess is an expert system shell (can fill in your own rules, the
engine already exists) written in Java
Implemented using Rete algorithm (efficient incremental rule
matching)
Can be downloaded for free from
http://herzberg.ca.sandia.gov/jess for educational use
Rules can be specified in Jess rule language or XML; rule
language is LISP-like:
(defrule welcome-toddlers
(person {age < 3})
=⇒
(println ”Hello, little one!”))
LHS is a pattern (if a person has age less than 3 years) and RHS

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is an action (function call, in particular can insert new facts).

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 Rules in Java

Exercise and next lecture

Construct a decision table for the following piece of Lenton local

knowledge: When a burglar alarm sounds, if it is in one of
students’ houses where alarm sounds every week, ignore it.
Otherwise have a look outside and if the house looks not broken
into and there is nobody moving inside it, ignore the alarm.
Otherwise call police.
Next lecture: Description logic, ontology languages
Brachman and Levesque, chapter 9

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