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Lecture Notes 2 Expert Systems

The document discusses knowledge representation in expert systems, highlighting its importance in encoding information for problem-solving and mimicking human reasoning. It outlines various types of knowledge, such as declarative, procedural, and heuristic, and describes techniques like rules, semantic networks, frames, and ontologies, along with their advantages and disadvantages. Case studies and real-world applications illustrate the practical use of these techniques, while challenges like knowledge acquisition and scalability are also addressed.

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15 views19 pages

Lecture Notes 2 Expert Systems

The document discusses knowledge representation in expert systems, highlighting its importance in encoding information for problem-solving and mimicking human reasoning. It outlines various types of knowledge, such as declarative, procedural, and heuristic, and describes techniques like rules, semantic networks, frames, and ontologies, along with their advantages and disadvantages. Case studies and real-world applications illustrate the practical use of these techniques, while challenges like knowledge acquisition and scalability are also addressed.

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johnkoolleshan
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MASAAI MARA UNIVERSITY COLLEGE

DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTING & INFORMATION SYSTEMS

COM 4252-1: EXPERT SYSTEMS


Week 2: Knowledge Representation in Expert Systems

B Y:
P R O F. S I LVA N C E O . A B E K A
[email protected]
Lecture Outline:
1) Introduction to Knowledge Representation
2) Types of Knowledge in Expert Systems
3) Techniques of Knowledge Representation
4) Case Studies and Real-World Applications
5) Challenges in Knowledge Representation
1. Introduction to Knowledge Representation
Definition:
Knowledge representation is the process of encoding information about a
domain into a format that a computer system can utilize to solve complex
problems.
Importance:
◦ Enables systems to mimic human reasoning.
◦ Facilitates efficient storage, retrieval, and manipulation of information.
2. Types of Knowledge in Expert Systems
Declarative Knowledge:
◦ Facts or propositions about the domain.
◦ Example: "All patients with a fever should have their temperature monitored regularly."

Procedural Knowledge:
◦ How-to knowledge or processes.
◦ Example: Steps to diagnose a disease based on symptoms.

Heuristic Knowledge:
◦ Rules of thumb or expert intuition.
◦ Example: "If a car engine won’t start and the battery is old, replace the battery first."

Meta-knowledge:
◦ Knowledge about the other types of knowledge is called Meta-knowledge.
Structural knowledge:
• Structural knowledge is basic knowledge to problem-solving.
• It describes relationships between various concepts such as kind of, part of, and grouping of something.
• It describes the relationship that exists between concepts or objects.
3. Techniques of Knowledge Representation
1. Rules (Production Rules):
◦ Represent knowledge as "IF-THEN" statements.
◦ Example:
◦ IF a patient has a sore throat AND a fever, THEN suggest a throat culture test.
◦ Case Study:
◦ MYCIN: A medical expert system used for diagnosing bacterial infections and prescribing treatments.
◦ Production rules system consist of (condition, action) pairs which mean, "If condition then action".

Advantages of Production rule:


◦ The production rules are expressed in natural language.
◦ The production rules are highly modular, so we can easily remove, add or modify an individual rule.

Disadvantages of Production rule:


◦ Production rule system does not exhibit any learning capabilities, as it does not store the result of the problem for
the future uses.
◦ During the execution of the program, many rules may be active hence rule-based production systems are inefficient.
2. Semantic Networks:
•Represent relationships between concepts in a graphical format.
•This representation consist of mainly two types of relations:
IS-A relation (Inheritance)
Kind-of-relation
Example: Following are some statements which we need to represent in the form of nodes and arcs.

Statements:
Jerry is a cat.
Jerry is a mammal
Jerry is owned by Priya.
Jerry is brown colored.
All Mammals are animal.
Drawbacks in Semantic representation:
• Semantic networks take more computational time at runtime as we need to traverse the complete network tree to
answer some questions. It might be possible in the worst case scenario that after traversing the entire tree, we find
that the solution does not exist in this network.
• Semantic networks try to model human-like memory (Which has 1015 neurons and links) to store the information,
but in practice, it is not possible to build such a vast semantic network.
• These types of representations are inadequate as they do not have any equivalent quantifier, e.g., for all, for some,
none, etc.
• Semantic networks do not have any standard definition for the link names.
• These networks are not intelligent and depend on the creator of the system.

Advantages of Semantic network:


• Semantic networks are a natural representation of knowledge.
• Semantic networks convey meaning in a transparent manner.
• These networks are simple and easily understandable.
3. Frames:
•Represent stereotypical situations using attributes and their values.
•Example: A "hotel room" frame includes attributes like “room type” (single/double), “price,” and
“amenities.”
Real-World Application:
• Used in travel booking expert systems to match user preferences with available options.
Advantages of frame representation:
◦ The frame knowledge representation makes the programming easier by grouping the related data.
◦ The frame representation is comparably flexible and used by many applications in AI.
◦ It is very easy to add slots for new attribute and relations.
◦ It is easy to include default data and to search for missing values.
◦ Frame representation is easy to understand and visualize.

Disadvantages of frame representation:


• In frame system inference mechanism is not be easily processed.
• Inference mechanism cannot be smoothly proceeded by frame representation.
• Frame representation has a much generalized approach.
4. Ontologies:
•Define a structured set of terms and their relationships within a domain.
•Example: Ontologies in agriculture for pest management.
Real-World Application:
• Used in Precision Agriculture systems to integrate data from sensors and recommend practices.

•5. Logic-Based Representations:


•Use formal logic (e.g., propositional and predicate logic) to represent and reason about
knowledge.
•Example:
• "If a person is a parent, they have a child."
4. Case Studies and Real-World Applications
Case Study 1: DENDRAL
Domain: Chemistry.
Purpose: To identify molecular structures of chemical compounds.
Knowledge Representation: Used rules to encode chemical bonding knowledge.
Impact: Helped automate chemical analysis for researchers.
Case Study 2: CYC
Domain: General knowledge.
Purpose: To create a comprehensive knowledge base that models human common sense.
Knowledge Representation: Semantic networks and ontologies.
Impact: Basis for many AI systems requiring general reasoning.
Real-World Application 1: Agricultural Pest Management System
Description: Uses rules to diagnose crop diseases and recommend treatments.
Knowledge Representation: Frames and rules.

Real-World Application 2: Customer Support Chatbots


Description: Provide automated responses to customer queries using procedural and heuristic
knowledge.
Knowledge Representation: Logic-based rules and natural language processing (NLP).
5. Challenges in Knowledge Representation
Knowledge Acquisition:
Extracting and formalizing tacit knowledge from human experts.
Complexity:
Representing dynamic, uncertain, or ambiguous knowledge.
Scalability:
Managing large knowledge bases efficiently.
Summary of the Lecture
Knowledge representation is a fundamental component of expert systems, as it defines how
information about the domain is encoded and used for reasoning. Techniques such as rules,
semantic networks, frames, ontologies, and logic-based representations play a critical role in
building intelligent systems. Case studies like MYCIN and DENDRAL demonstrate the practical
applications of these techniques in healthcare, chemistry, and other domains. However,
challenges such as knowledge acquisition and scalability require continuous innovation in this
field.
Revision Questions
1) Define knowledge representation and explain its importance in expert systems.
2) Differentiate between declarative, procedural, and heuristic knowledge with examples.
3) Describe the rule-based knowledge representation technique and provide a real-world
example of its application.
4) Discuss the role of semantic networks in knowledge representation, citing one case study.
5) What are the key challenges in knowledge representation, and how can they be addressed?

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