IRList Digest Wednesday, 8 October 1986 Volume 2 : Issue 50
Today's Topics:
Query - Indexing Legal Depositions
Discussion - Soundex (ref. IRList #44)
COGSCI - Object Recognition as Visual Classification
COGSCI - Generic Tasks in Expert Systems, Pattern Knowledge and Search
COGSCI - General Logic
COGSCI - Planning Simultaneous Actions in Temporally Rich Worlds
CSLI - Figural Representation Discussion Group
News addresses are ARPANET: fox%vt@csnet-relay.arpa BITNET: foxea@vtvax3.bitnet
CSNET: fox@vt UUCPNET: seismo!vtisr1!irlistrq
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sat, 20 Sep 86 00:54:22 edt
From: csnet_gateway (LAWS@SRI-STRIPE.ARPA)
To: bboard.maintainer@a.cs.cmu.edu
Subject: Text abstraction. References?
[Forwarded from the CMU BBoard by Laws@SRI-STRIPE.]
A friend of mine is interested in automated text abstraction. In
particular, he is would like to write a system that does as much as possible
toward abstraction and subject indexing of legal depositions. Does anyone
know anything about this subject, or know of any good references?
Dean
[Note: Several IRList subscribers have worked or are working in this
are, so I hope they will send information to IRList which can be
filtered back to CMU. Carole Hafner is the first who comes to mind,
and I remember Harry Wu being interested. - Ed]
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 19 Sep 86 12:35:05 edt
From: rdj (R. Daniel Johnson)
Subject: IRLIST V2#44
Ed,
In V2#44, Stephen Page requested information on what is called the "Soundex
Code" which is a moderately effective and inexpensive means of matching
words (e.g. names) which "sound" alike. I used such matching in a film
booking system some years ago to match teacher names in schools.
...
The technique is simple and goes something like this: drop all vowels
from a word to match, do a many-to-one mapping of the consonants, and
do a search on the resulting 4-character code. I think I still have
a listing of the routine in HP Systems Programming Language (ALGOL-like.)
Perhaps I should offer it to Stephen Page? (It wasn't clear whether he
wanted to use it or find literature about its use.)
-d
P.S. on Soundex
Aha... Soundex is documented in Knuth's Searching and Sorting.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 22 Sep 86 18:39:49 edt
From: csnet_gateway (DEJONG%OZ.AI.MIT.EDU@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU)
Subject: Cognitive Science Calendar
Date: Monday, 22 September 1986 11:09-EDT
subject: Center for Biological Information Processing
Wednesday, 24 September 12:00pm Room: E25-401
Object Recognition as Visual Classification
Aaron Bobick
MIT - Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
One of the most commonly proposed goals of a perceptual system is that
of object recognition. Yet, to date, we have been unable to define
precisely what the task of recognition really entails. In this talk I
will provide a definition of recognition in terms of classifying
objects into natural categories, and I will argue that natural
categories can be defined in terms of processes that create objects
and the interaction between objects, their environment and the
observer. Given this definition of object recognition we can
decompose the task into the three components of representation,
speculation and evaluation and consider the knowledge or constraints
that must be provided to the observer if he is th be able to classify
objects successfully. Both an idealized world and the natural world
will be considered. For the natural world, a procedure based upon the
uncertainty of categorical inferences will be presented along with
some results of an implementation that "naturally" categorizes leaves.
Finally, the questions of whether recognition should be considered as
a learning problem and exactly what can or should be learned will be
addressed, i.e., some difficult questions will be deftly hedged.
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 30 Sep 86 20:39:32 edt
From: csnet_gateway (DEJONG%OZ.AI.MIT.EDU@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU)
Subject: Cognitive Science Calendar
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Date: Friday, 26 September 1986 11:09-EDT
Subject: Generic Tasks in Knowledge-Based Reasoning
Wednesday, 1 October 3:00pm Room: NE43-512A
Generic Tasks in Knowledge-Based Reasoning: Caracterizing and
Designing Expert Systems at the "Right" Level of Abstraction
B. Chandrasekaran
Laboratory for Artificial Intelligence Research
Department of Computer and Information Science
Ohio State University
Columbus, Ohio 43210
We outline the elements of a framework for expert system design that
we have been developing in our research group over the last several
years. This framework is based on the claim that complex
knowledge-based reasoning tasks can often be decomposed into a number
of generic tasks each with associated types of knowledge and family
of control regimes. At different stages in reasoning, the system will
typically engage in one of the tasks, depending upon the knowledge
available and the state of problem solving. The advantages of this
point of view are manifold: (i) Since typically the generic tasks
are at a much higher level of abstraction than those associated with
first generation expert system languages, knowledge can be acquired
and represented directly at the level appropriate to the information
processing task. (ii) Since each of the generic task has an
appropriate control regime, problem solving behavior may be more
perspicuously encoded. (ii) Because of a richer generic vocabulary in
terms of which knowledge and control are represented, explanation of
problem solving behavior is also more perspicuous. We briefly
describe six generic task that we have found very useful in our work
on knowledge-based reasoning: classification, state abstraction,
knowledge-directed retrieval, object synthesis by plan selection and
refinement, hypothesis matching, and assembly of compound hypotheses
for abduction.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Date: Friday, 26 September 1986 11:09-EDT
Subject: LCS Distinguished Lecturer Series
Thursday, 2 October 3:30pm Room: 34-101
Pattern Knowledge and Search: The Suprem Architecture
Hans J. Berliner
Senior Research Scientist
Computer Science Department
Cartnegie Mellon University
We describe a problem solving architecture that combines rapid search
through a state space coupled with highly sophisticated evaluation of
states. Speed of searching is made possible by special purpose
hardware tailored to producing state-change operators for the domain.
Evaluation of states is done by more general machines that can extract
small patterns in parallel and use these to produce much better
evaluations than are possible in non-pattern oriented methods. In
this connection, we present a hierarchy of knowledge.
This method has been applied to the development of Hitech, a chess
machine that is now ranked within the top 200 chess players in the US.
While Hitech's chess understanding is still far short of that of the
very top players in the world, its ability to calculate accurately,
and look at one million times as many possibilities in unit time as
the best humans can, make up for this to a large degree. We discuss
the issues involved in creating such architectures and how they can be
improved. Performance data on Hitech will also be presented.
Host: Michael L. Dertouzos
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 30 Sep 86 20:44:01 edt
From: csnet_gateway (DEJONG%OZ.AI.MIT.EDU@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU)
Subject: Cognitive Science Calendar
Date: Tuesday, 30 September 1986 11:00-EDT
From: Lisa F. Melcher <LISA@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Thursday, 2 October 2:00pm Room: NE43-512a
" GENERAL LOGIC "
Gordon Plotkin
Department of Computer Science
University of Edinburgh, Scotland
A good many logics have been proposed for use in Computer Science.
Implementing them involves repeating a great deal of work. We propose a
general account of logics as regards both their syntax and inference rules.
As immediate target we envision a system to which one inputs a logic
obtaining a simple proof-checker. The ideas build on work in logic of
Paulson, Martin-Lof and Schroeder-Heister and in the typed lambda-calculus of
Huet and Coquand and Meyer and Reinhold. The slogan is: Judgements are
Types. For example the judgement that a proposition is true is identified
with its type of proofs; general and hypothetical judgements are identified
with dependent product types. This gives one account of Natural Deduction.
It would be interesting to extend the work to consider (two-sided) sequent
calculi for classical and modal logics.
Sponsored by TOC, Laboratory for Computer Science
Albert Meyer, Host
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 2 Oct 86 18:59:31 edt
From: csnet_gateway (DEJONG%OZ.AI.MIT.EDU@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU)
Subject: Cognitive Science Calendar
Date: Thursday, 2 October 1986 13:30-EDT
From: Brad Goodman <BGOODMAN at BBNG.ARPA>
Monday, 6 October 10:30am Room: 3rd floor large conference room,
BBN Labs, 10 Moulton Street, Cambridge
BBN Laboratories
Science Development Program
AI/Education Seminar
Planning Simultaneous Actions in Temporally Rich Worlds
Professor James Allen
University of Rochester
(james@rochester)
This talk describes work done with Richard Pelavin over the last few
years. We have developed a formal logic of action that allows us to
represent knowledge and reason about the interactions between events
that occur simultaneously or overlap in time. This includes interactions
between two (or more) actions that a single agent might perform
simultaneously, as well as interactions between an agent's actions and
events occuring in the external world. The logic is built upon an
interval-based temporal logic extended with modal operators similar to
temporal necessity and a counterfactual operator. Using this formalism,
we can represent a wide range of possible ways in which actions may
interact.
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 4 Oct 86 00:58:19 edt
From: csnet_gateway (EMMA@CSLI.STANFORD.EDU)
Subject: Late Newsletter Entry
Date: 2 Oct 86 17:43 PDT
From: dlevy.pa@Xerox.COM
Emma:
Could you send this out through the usual channels as a late
newsletter entry?
Thanks,
David
Reading and Discussion Group on Figural Representation
Organizers: David Levy, Geoff Nunberg
First meeting: Thursday, October 9 at 10 AM, Ventura Hall
We are forming a reading and discussion group to explore the nature of
figural (roughly speaking, visual) representation. Systems of figural
representation include writing systems, systems of musical notation,
screen "icons," bar graphs, architectural renderings, maps, and so
forth. This topic lies at the intersection of various concerns relevant
to a number of us at CSLI, at Xerox PARC, and at SRI -- theoretical
concerns about the nature of language and representation and their
manifestation in the building of systems and the design of visual
notations for formal languages. There is currently no well-motivated
framework for discussing such material, no map on which to locate
important terms such as "document," "text," "icon," and "format." But
there is clearly a coherent subject matter here waiting to be explored.
Topics we want to look at in early meetings include:
1. Properties of the figural.
2. Figural representation and representation in general.
3. The typology of figural systems.
4. Writing as a figural representation system; distinctive properties
of written language.
5. The technological basis for figural representation (from writing to
print to the computer).
Initially, we plan to organize the discussion around readings drawn from
the literatures of a number of disciplines, among them linguistics,
psychology, literary theory, art criticism, AI, anthropology and
history. We expect to meet once a week (or once every two weeks) at
Ventura Hall (CSLI), starting Thursday morning, October 9, at 10AM.
Please note that we consider this to be a working group, not a general
public forum or a TINLunch.
At our first meeting, we will be discussing a short paper, "Visible
Language," which outlines some of the areas we will be concerned with.
Copies are available at the Ventura Hall desk.
------------------------------
END OF IRList Digest
********************