Publication Details

Specifying and Reasoning with Under-Specified Knowledge Base

by Vinay K. Chaudhri and Son Cao Tran

in International Conference on Knowledge Representation and Reasoning

Abstract

A large and complex knowledge base that models some aspect of the real world can rarely be fully specified. Two examples of such underspecification are that (i) some of the cardinality constraints are omitted; (ii) some properties of all individual instances of a class are specialized across a class hierarchy, but specific references to which particular values are specialized are omitted. Such knowledge bases are of great practical interest as they are the basis of an empirically tested knowledge acquisition system that has been used to construct a knowledge base from a significant portion of a biology textbook. In this paper, we formalize an underspecified knowledge base using answer set programming, and give a set of rules called UMAP that support inheritance reasoning in such a knowledge base.

Electronic Copies

Adobe PDF

BibTeX

EndNote

Associated Projects

Automated User-Centered Reasoning and Acquisition System The goal of this project is to build a generic knowledge acquisition capability for Physics, Chemistry, and Biology. Using the system, the scientists will be able to formulate their knowledge in the three science domains, and the high school students will be able to pose Advanced-Placement style questions and get user appropriate explanations.

AIC Personnel