Knowledge Representation

•Propositional Logic
• Predicate Logic
• Semantic Networks
• Frames
• Fuzzy Logic
 Propositional Logic
• A formal method of reasoning, which represents
knowledge, allowing automated inference and
problem solving.
• Concepts are translated into symbolic
representations which closely approximate the
meaning. These symbolic structures can then be
manipulated in programs to deduce various
facts, to carry out a form of automated
reasoning.
• Propositional logic is the simplest.
• Symbols represent whole propositions (facts):
P, Q, R, S, etc..
• These are joined by logical connectives (and,
or, implication) e.g., P  Q; Q  R
• Given some statements in the logic we can
 Propositional Logic:
Semantics
• Propositions
– Sentences and truth values
– Propositional connectives and their truth tables
• Negation: ~P
• Conjunction: P ۸ Q
• Disjunction: P ۷ Q (inclusive or)
• Implication: P → Q
• Equivalence: P ↔ Q
– Other propositional connectives
• P⊕Q (exclusive or), P↓Q (nor), P↑Q (nand),..
 Propositional Logic
● Propositions are some elementary atomic
sentences. Propositions may be either true or false.
In propositional logic, a world is represented as
knowledge using a list of facts.
● Syntax of PL :
● symbol -> P | Q | R | S | ...
● atomic sentence -> TRUE | FALSE
● sentence -> atomic sentence | complex sentence
● complex sentences -> ~ sentence | (sentence ^ sentence) |
(sentence v sentence) | (sentence → sentence) |
● (sentence ↔ sentence)

● Precedence relation operators: ~,^,v,→, ↔.

 Propositional Logic:
Examples
● My car is painted red.
● Snow is white.
● People live on the moon.
● Logical connectives:
● It is raining and the wind is blowing.
● I shall go there or ask kamal to visit him.
● If you study hard you will be successful.
● The sum of 20 and 30 is not 100.
● The car belongs to the VC is painted silver.
 Semantic Rules for Statements
Rule True False
No.
1 Statements
T Statements
F
2 ~f ~t
3 t or t’ f&a
4 t or a a&f
5 a or t F or f’
6 a🡪t t🡪f
7 f🡪a t 🡨🡪 f
8 t 🡨🡪 t’ f 🡨🡪 t
9 f 🡨🡪 f ’
 Properties of Statements
Satisfiable: A statement is satisfiable if
there is some interpretation for which it is
true.
Contradiction: A statement is said to be
contradictory (unsatisfiable) if there is no
interpretation for which it is true.
Valid: A statement is valid if it is true for
every interpretations. Valid statements
are also called tautologies.
Equivalence: Two sentences are
equivalent if they have the same truth
value under every interpretation.
 Semantics &
Interpretations
P Q P∧Q P∨Q ~P P→Q P↔Q

f f f f t t t

f t f t t t f

t f f t f f f

t t t t f t t
 Meaning of Statements
What would be the meaning of the following statement,
if some interpretation imply true to P, false to Q and
false to R ?:
((P & ~ Q) → R) ∨ Q
Assignments:
1. Find the meaning of the statement:
(~ P V Q) & R → S V (~ R & Q)
for each of the interpretations given below:
I1: P is true, Q is true, R is false, S is true.
I2: P is true, Q is false, R is true, S is true.
2. Determine whether each of the following
sentence is
(a) satisfiable (b) contradictory, or (c) valid
S1: (P & Q) V ~ (P & Q) S2: (P V Q) → (P & Q)
S3: (P & Q)→ R V~Q S4: (P V Q) & (P V ~Q) V P
S5: P →Q →~P S6: P V Q & ~P V ~Q & P
 Meaning of Statements …
If the earth moves...
round the sun or the
sun moves round the earth, then
Copernicus might be a mathematician
but wasn’t an astronomer.

Inspite of having French nationality, B.

Russel was a critic of imperilism, then
either he was not a bachelor or he was a
universal lover.
 Rules of Inference
● Modus Ponens

∴Q
P → Q, P {((P → Q) ∧ P) → Q}

● Modus Tollens

∴~ P
P → Q, ~ Q {((P → Q) ∧ ~ Q) → ~ P}

● Hypothetical Syllogism (H. S.)

∴P → R
(P → Q) & (Q → R)

● Disjunctive Syllogism (D. S.)

∴Q
(P V Q) ~ P
 Drawbacks of PL
● Propositional logic isn’t powerful enough as a general
knowledge representation language.
● Impossible to make general statements. E.g., “all students
sit exams” or “if any student sits an exam they either pass
or fail”.
● So we need predicate logic..
 Predicate Logic
• In predicate logic the basic unit is a predicate/
argument structure called an atomic sentence:
• LIKES (azad, chocolate)
• TALL (habib)
• Arguments can be any of:
• constant symbol, such as ‘azad’
• variable symbol, such as x
• function expression, e.g., FATHER_OF (hasan)
• So we can have:
• LIKES (X, chocolate)
• FRIENDS (FATHER_OF (rita), FATHER_OF (choiti))
Syntax of Predicate Logic
• These atomic sentences can be combined
using logic connectives
• LIKES (rita, hasan)  TALL (hasan)
• BASKET_BALL_PLAYER (hasan)  TALL (hasan)
• Sentences can also be formed using
quantifiers
• x LOVELY (x) Everything is lovely.
• x LOVELY (x) Something is lovely.
• x IN (x, garden)  LOVELY (x) Everything in
the garden is lovely.
 Predicate Logic: Examples ...
● All employees earning TK. 30,000 or more per year
pay taxes.
∀x ((E(x) & GE (i (x), 30000)) → T(x)
● Some employees are sick today
y ((E(y) → S(y))
● No employee earns more than the president
∀x ∀y ((E(x) & P(y)) → ~GE((i (x), i (y)))
 Logic
• Can have several quantifiers, e.g.,
• x y LOVES (x, y)
• x HANDSOME (x)  y LOVES (y, x)
• So we can represent things like:
• All men are mortal.
• No one likes hartal.
• Everyone taking AI will pass their exams.
• Every race has a winner.
• Sajjad likes everyone who is tall.
• Rita doesn’t like anyone who prefers arguments.
• There is something small and slimy on the table.
 Logic
• There is a precise meaning to expressions in
predicate logic.
• Like in propositional logic, it is all about
determining whether something is true or false.
• x P(x) means that P(x) must be true for every
object x in the domain of interest.
• x P(x) means that P(x) must be true for at least
one object x in the domain of interest.
• So if we have a domain of interest consisting of
just two people, Hasan and Belal, and we know
that TALL(hasan) and TALL(belal) are true, we
can say that x TALL(x) is true.
 Semantic Net
● An long existing notion: there are different pieces of knowledge of
world, and they are all linked together through certain semantics.
• knowledge is expressed as a collection of concepts,
represented by nodes (shown as boxes in the diagram),
connected together by relationships, represented by arcs
(shown as arrows in the diagram).
• certain arcs - particularly isa arcs - allow inheritance of
properties.
Basic Components
• Nodes studen
• Represent concepts t
IS-A
• Arcs
• Represent relations FRIEND-
hasan OF
AGE
• Labels for nodes and
arcs 21 rita
 Semantic Net
● Common arcs used for representing hierarchies include isa and
has-part.
Example:
The Queen Mary is an ocean liner.
Every ocean liner is a ship

ship

IS-A

Ocean_liner

IS-A

Queen_mary
 Semantic Net …..
Common arcs used for representing hierarchies include isa and
has-part.
HAS-PART
IS-A SHIP

Ocean Engine Hull

Oil Tanker
Liner
IS-A

Swimming Queen Liver Pool Boiler

Pool Mary
 Semantic Networks
Knowledge is represented as a network or graph
anim
al HAS_PART
subclas subclas head
s s mam
mal
reptil
e subclas
s
LIVES_IN eleph
africa large
ant SIZE
instanc
Nellie apple
e LIKES s
 Knowledge Representation:
Semantic Net

An long
existing
notion:
there are
different
pieces of
knowledge
of world, and
they are all
linked together
through certain
semantics.
 Knowledge Representation:
Semantic Net

▪ Developments of the semantic nets idea:

▪ psychological research into whether human
memory really was organised in this way.
▪ used in the knowledge bases in certain expert
systems: e.g. PROSPECTOR.
▪ special-purpose languages have been written to
express knowledge in semantic nets.
Organization of Knowledge
▪ By traversing network we can find:
▪ That Nellie has a head (by inheritance)
▪ That certain concepts related in certain ways (e.g., apples
and elephants).
▪ BUT: Meaning of semantic networks was not always well
defined.
▪ Are all Elephants big, or just typical elephants?
▪ Do all Elephants live in the “same” Africa?
▪ Do all animals have the same head?
▪ For machine processing these things must be defined.
 Major Limitations
• Lack of Semantics
• No formal semantic of the relations
• E.g. Does “ISA” mean subclass, member, etc?
• Possible multiple interpretations
• Restricted expressiveness
• E.g. can not distinguish between instance and class

• Advantages:
• Easy to follow hierarchy, easy to trace association, flexible

• Disadvantages:
• Meaning attached to nodes might be ambiguous
• exception handling is difficult
• difficult to program
 Semantic Nets …
▪ Problems with semantic nets
▪ logical inadequacy - vagueness about what types
and tokens really mean.
▪ heuristic inadequacy – finding a specific piece of
information could be chronically inefficient.
▪ trying to establish negation is likely to lead to a
combinatorial explosion.
▪ "spreading activation" search is very inefficient,
because it is not knowledge-guided.
 Frames
• Devised by Marvin Minsky, 1975.
• Incorporates certain valuable human thinking
characteristics:
• Expectations, assumptions, stereotypes. Exceptions. Fuzzy
boundaries between classes.
• The essence of this form of knowledge representation is
typicality, with exceptions, rather than definition.
• a data structure for representing a stereotyped situation
• a network of nodes and relations organized in a hierarchy
• the topmost nodes - general concepts
• the lower nodes - more specific instances

● The idea of frame hierarchies is very similar to the idea of class

hierarchies found in object-orientated programming.
 How Frames are Organized
▪ A frame system is a hierarchy of frames
▪ Each frame has:
▪ a name.
▪ slots: these are the properties of the entity
that has the name, and they have values. A
particular value may be:
▪ a default value
▪ an inherited value from a higher frame
▪ a procedure, called a demon, to find a
value
▪ In the higher levels of the frame hierarchy, typical knowledge
about the class is stored.
▪ The value in a slot may be a range or a condition.
▪ In the lower levels, the value in a slot may be a specific value, to
overwrite the value which would otherwise be inherited from a
higher frame.
 Frames … …
▪ An instance of an object is joined to its class by an
'instance_of' relationship.
▪ A class is joined to its superclass by a 'subclass_of'
relationship.
▪ Frames may contain both procedural and
declarative knowledge.
▪ Slot values normally amount to declarative knowledge, but
a daemon is in effect a small program. So a slot with a
daemon in it amounts to procedural knowledge.

▪ Note that a frames system may allow multiple inheritance but,

if it does so, it must make provision for cases when inherited

values conflict.
 Frames …
• Advantages:
• Expressive power, easy to set up
slots for new properties and relations
• easy to create specialized procedures
• easy to include default information
and detect missing values
• Disadvantages:
• Difficult to program
• difficult for inference
A car has 4 wheels, is moved by an engine, and runs on petrol
or diesel.

We can now add three slots to the frame.

The last of these has a restriction rather than a specific value.

Name: car Subclass of: thing car subclass_of

thing
with
Slots: wheels: 4,
Name: Value: Restrictions: moved_by:
engine,
fuel:
wheels 4
[value:
moved by engine unknown,
type:
fuel ? petrol or diesel [petrol,diesel]].
 “There is a particular type of car called Toyota, manufactured in
Japan.”

● We can add a second frame to our system, with one

slot. We don’t need to repeat the slots and values in
the previous frame: they will be inherited.

‘Toyota’
Name: Toyota Subclass of: car subclass_of
car
Slots: with
Name: Value: Restrictions: made_in:
‘Japan’.
made in Japan
“There is a particular type of Golf called a TDi, which runs on diesel,
has 4 cylinders, and has a 1.8 litre engine.”

Name: TDi Subclass of: Golf

‘TDi’ subclass_of
Slots: ‘Golf’
with
Name: Value: Restrictions:
fuel: diesel,
fuel diesel engine_capacity:
1.8,
engine
capacity 1.8 litres cylinders: 4.

cylinders 4
 Logic

▪ How do we precisely define the semantics

of a frame system or semantic network?
▪ Modern trend is to have special knowledge
representation languages which look a bit
like frames to users, but which:
▪ use logic to define what relations mean
▪ don’t provide the full power of predicate
logic, but a subset that allows efficient
inference. (May not want more than
inheritance).
 Summary
● Predicate logic provides well defined language for
knowledge representation supporting inference.
● Semantic nets, frames and objects all allow you to
define relations between objects, including class
relations (X isa Y).
● Only restricted inference supported by the methods -
that based on inheritance.
● So.. Jimy is a dog, dogs have 4 legs, so Jimy has 4
legs.
● Frames/Networks/Objects more natural, but only
explicitly support inheritance, and may not have well
defined semantics.
● Current trend is either to just use OO, or to use logic,
but specialises non-logic-based languages still exist.
Thank you for enjoying the
class.