1,721,010 research outputs found

    Learning from physical analogies: A study in analogy and the explanation process

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    To make programs that understand and interact with the world as well as people do, we must duplicate the kind of flexibility people exhibit when conjecturing plausible explanations of the diverse physical phenomena they encounter. This process often involves drawing upon physical analogies--viewing the situation and its behavior as similar to familiar phenomena, conjecturing that they share analogous underlying causes, and using the plausible interpretation as a foothold to further understanding, analysis, and hypothesis refinement.This thesis investigates analogical reasoning and learning applied to the task of constructing qualitative explanations for observed physical phenomena. Primary emphasis is placed on two central questions. First, how are analogies elaborated to sanction new inferences about a novel situation? This problem is addressed by contextual structure-mapping, a knowledge-intensive adaptation of Gentner's structure-mapping theory. It presents analogy elaboration as a map and analyze cycle, in which two situations are placed in correspondence, followed by problem solving and inference production focused on correspondence inadequacies. Second, how is the quality of a proposed analogy evaluated and used for some performance task? A theory of verification-based analogical learning is presented which addresses the tenuous nature of analogically inferred concepts and describes procedures that can be used to increase confidence in the inferred knowledge. Specifically, it relies on analogical inference to hypothesize new theories and simulation of those theories to analyze their validity. It represents a view of analogy as an iterative process of hypothesis formation, testing, and revision.These ideas are illustrated via PHINEAS, a program which uses similarity to posit qualitative explanations for time-varying descriptions of physical behaviors. It builds upon existing work in qualitative physics to provide a rich environment in which to describe and reason with theories of the physical world.Made available in DSpace on 2011-05-07T13:14:35Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license.txt: 4922 bytes, checksum: 910b249b4beec47e7ab768910c8f966f (MD5) 8916244.pdf: 13616100 bytes, checksum: fa39afd3a7db5f0c35c716fd3ea0371e (MD5) Previous issue date: 1989Item marked as restricted to the 'UIUC Users [automated]' Group (id=2) by Howard Ding ([email protected]) on 2011-05-07T14:52:11Z Item is restricted indefinitely.Restriction data tranferred 2014-07-01T11:24:00-05:00 Original Data Group with Access UIUC Users [automated] Release Date: none Reason: ETDs are only available to UIUC Users without author permissionETDs are only available to UIUC Users without author permissionU of I Onl

    Learning from physical analogies: A study in analogy and the explanation process

    No full text
    To make programs that understand and interact with the world as well as people do, we must duplicate the kind of flexibility people exhibit when conjecturing plausible explanations of the diverse physical phenomena they encounter. This process often involves drawing upon physical analogies--viewing the situation and its behavior as similar to familiar phenomena, conjecturing that they share analogous underlying causes, and using the plausible interpretation as a foothold to further understanding, analysis, and hypothesis refinement.This thesis investigates analogical reasoning and learning applied to the task of constructing qualitative explanations for observed physical phenomena. Primary emphasis is placed on two central questions. First, how are analogies elaborated to sanction new inferences about a novel situation? This problem is addressed by contextual structure-mapping, a knowledge-intensive adaptation of Gentner's structure-mapping theory. It presents analogy elaboration as a map and analyze cycle, in which two situations are placed in correspondence, followed by problem solving and inference production focused on correspondence inadequacies. Second, how is the quality of a proposed analogy evaluated and used for some performance task? A theory of verification-based analogical learning is presented which addresses the tenuous nature of analogically inferred concepts and describes procedures that can be used to increase confidence in the inferred knowledge. Specifically, it relies on analogical inference to hypothesize new theories and simulation of those theories to analyze their validity. It represents a view of analogy as an iterative process of hypothesis formation, testing, and revision.These ideas are illustrated via PHINEAS, a program which uses similarity to posit qualitative explanations for time-varying descriptions of physical behaviors. It builds upon existing work in qualitative physics to provide a rich environment in which to describe and reason with theories of the physical world.U of I OnlyETDs are only available to UIUC Users without author permissio

    Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis

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    The present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed

    Variations on the Author

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    “Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship

    Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis

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    We provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis

    Proposal For a Study of Commonsense Physical Reasoning

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    This report describes research done at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Support for the laboratory's artificial intelligence research is provided in part by the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Department of Defense under Office of Naval Research contract N00014-80-C-0505.Our common sense views of physics are the first coin in our intellectual capital; understanding precisely what they contain could be very important both for understanding ourselves and for making machines more like us. This proposal describes a domain that has been designed for studying reasoning about constrained motion and describes my theories about performing such reasoning. The issues examined include qualitative reasoning about shape and physical processes, as well as ways of using knowledge about motion other than "envisioning". Being a proposal, the treatment of these issues is necessarily cursory and incomplete.MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agenc

    How can spatial language be learned?

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    How languages are learned is one of the deepest mysteries of cognitive science. This question can be addressed from multiple perspectives. This position paper considers two of them: (1) How do people learn spatial language? (2) Given the wide range of spatial terms in language, how might we bootstrap the linguistic capabilities of intelligent systems that need spatial language to achieve wide and accurate coverage? We discuss each question in turn

    Qualitative models for space system engineering

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    The objectives of this project were: (1) to investigate the implications of qualitative modeling techniques for problems arising in the monitoring, diagnosis, and design of Space Station subsystems and procedures; (2) to identify the issues involved in using qualitative models to enhance and automate engineering functions. These issues include representing operational criteria, fault models, alternate ontologies, and modeling continuous signals at a functional level of description; and (3) to develop a prototype collection of qualitative models for fluid and thermal systems commonly found in Space Station subsystems. Potential applications of qualitative modeling to space-systems engineering, including the notion of intelligent computer-aided engineering are summarized. Emphasis is given to determining which systems of the proposed Space Station provide the most leverage for study, given the current state of the art. Progress on using qualitative models, including development of the molecular collection ontology for reasoning about fluids, the interaction of qualitative and quantitative knowledge in analyzing thermodynamic cycles, and an experiment on building a natural language interface to qualitative reasoning is reported. Finally, some recommendations are made for future research
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