COMP304 & COMP521: Knowledge Representation and Reasoning

here is the answer of one of the mock exam-questions.

Schedule

You can find the time table for the course on the Orbit system.You can also find it in the first copies of the handouts (see below). The course starts on Monday 26th of September. Thus: week 1 of the course corresponds to week 39 of the year.

You find here the syllabus for COMP521 and here the syllabus for COMP304.

There will be two class-tests during this term (each of one hour) and an exam (two and a half hours). See also assessment. The schedule for the class tests is as follows:

• The first class test was held Wednesday 2 November 2012. Here is a link to the test and the solutions.
• The second class test was held Monday 5 December 2012. Here is a link to the test and the solutions. Here is the feedback of the first test as of 18/12/2011. Marks will only be definite after the final meeting of the Board of Examiners.
Here are the

Literature

There is no compulsory literature to be read for the course. Here are some hints for those who like to know more. The course basically deals with Description Logic and with Modal Logic, with Epistemic Logic as the main application in the second half of the course.

The following book provides background information for Modal and Epistemic Logic. Ten copies of it are available in the library. All references in the descriptions of the week refer to this book.

As far as description logics are concerned, you can have a look at

This book is out of print, but available for download. There is also the following book

which gives an overview of applications of modal and related logics (the Harold Cohen Library has three copies, class no. 518.54.H97)

Handouts and Schedule

1. Week 1, starting 26 September. Introduction to knowledge representation (KR), formalisms for KR and in particular propositional logic, introduction to modal logic.
   Handouts first week.
   
2. Week 2. Modal logic.
   Handouts second and third week.
   
3. Weeks 3 - 6. Description Logic. Handouts are here
4. Weeks 7 - 9. Epistemic Logic
   Here are the handouts, six slides on a page. You can also download the first set of slides and the second set of slides independently.
5. Weeks 10 - 11. Introduction to Probabilities
   Here are the handouts, six slides on a page.

Exercises

Revision

1. As a preparation for each of the two class tests, a mock test was handed out during the lectures and discussed at the tutorial

Syllabus

Aims:

• To introduce Knowledge Representation as a research area.
• To give a complete and critical understanding of the notion of representation languages and logics.
• To study modal logics and their use;
• To study description logic and its use;
• To study epistemic logic and its use
• To study methods for reasoning under uncertainty

Learning outcomes:

• be able to explain and discuss the need for formal approaches to knowledge representation in artificial intelligence, and in particular the value of logic as such an approach;
• be able to demonstrate knowledge of the basics of propositional logic
• be able to determine the truth/satisfiability of modal formula;
• be able to perform modal logic model checking on simple examples
• be able to perform inference tasks in description logic
• be able to model problems concenring agents' knowledge using epistemic logic;
• be able to indicate how updates and other epistemic actions determine changes on epistemic models;
• have sufficient knowledge to build "interpreted systems" from a specification, and to verify the "knowledge" properties of such systems;
• be familiar with the axioms of a logic for knowledge of multiple agents;
• be able to demonstrate knowledge of the basics of probability and decision theory, and their use in addressing problems in knowledge representation;
• be able to model simple problems involving uncertainty, using probability and decision theory;
• be able to perform simple Hilbert-style deductions in modal and epistemic logic;
• be able to use tableau based methods to do inference in description logic.

Recommended texts:

Syllabus

Assessment weightings:

1. 10% class test about weeks 1 - 4
2. 10% class test about weeks 5 - 8
3. 80% written examination about all the material covered in the lecture, the tutorial and the handouts