| Coordinator's
Report Nada Lavraťc
Since the very start of machine
learning research, logic has been very popular as a representation language for inductive
concept learning and the possibilities for learning in a first order representation have
been investigated. Recently, this research has concentrated in the lively research field
of Inductive Logic Programming (ILP), which studies inductive machine learning within the
framework of logic
programming.
The Computational Logic and Machine
Learning area of the Compulog network is concerned with the development of the theory and
practical algorithms for learning in a logic-based framework. A major research topic is
Inductive Logic Programming (ILP) and related forms of learning, such as learning by
analogy, abductive learning, non-monotonic learning, and explanation-based learning.
Europe has a leading role in ILP
research, also due to the EU support of scientific projects in this area: ESPRIT III Basic
Research Project ILP (1992--1995), scientific network ILPNET (1993--1996), and the current
ESPRIT IV Long Term Research Project ILP2 (1996--1998). The strong logic programming
tradition makes it easy for Europeans to take part in this challenging area of research.
Logic programming research and Prolog
have a long tradition also in Japan. Hence, increased interest in ILP and strong research
results come recently also from Japan. It was very good that a number of ILP related
events were organised this year in Japan, at the occasion of the International Joint
Conference in Artificial Intelligence, which was held in Nagoya in August. These events
include the IJCAI workshops "Frontiers of ILP'' (about 30 participants),
"Abduction and Induction'' (about 25 participants), and the tutorial "Logic and
learning'' (about 20 attendees, presented by Nada Lavraťc and Luc De Raedt). About half
of the participants of these events were Japanese researchers. Another interesting
observation concerns the program of IJCAI. At the first glance, ILP was not strongly
represented: there was just one session called "Logic and ILP'' in which three papers
were presented. However, according to my analysis, there were other ILP related papers,
scattered over different sessions. These include two Japanese papers in the session
"Cognitive modeling 1'', one Japanese paper in "Automated reasoning 7'', one UK
paper in "Challenge 1'', one Australian paper in ``Probabilistic Reasoning 2'', and
one Japanese paper in "Probabilistic reasoning 3''.
Tutorials and invited talks on ILP were
given also at other international conferences, including "The practical application
of knowledge discovery and data mining'' (PADD'97, tutorial by Luc De Raedt, invited talk
by Stephen Muggleton), "The International Conference on Machine Learning'' (tutorial
by Luc De Raedt and Nada Lavraťc, presented by Luc De Raedt), and probably some others. A
new book on ILP "Foundations of Inductive Logic Programming'' by S-H. Nienhuys-Cheng
and R. de Wolf, was published by Springer in 1997. In 1997 and 1998 there will be a number
of special issues on ILP of the following journals: Machine Learning, Journal of Logic
Programming, Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery, and New Generation Computing.
The main ILP activities in 1997 were
concentrated in the "ILP Week in Prague'', 15--20 September 1997, organized by Olga
Stepankova and Dimitar Kazakov, the Czech Technical University. The week consisted of
three main events: "The International Summer School on Inductive Logic Programming
and Knowledge Discovery in Databases'' (ILP and KDD), 15--17 September, "The Seventh
International Workshop on Inductive Logic Programming'' (ILP-97), 17--20 September 1997,
and CompulogNet Meeting of the Area Computational Logic and Machine Learning
"Representation issues in reasoning and learning'', 20 September. The summer school
was attended by 45 participants, the ILP workshop by about 80 participants and the area
meeting by 40--50. We were happy to see many newcomers to the field of ILP (both
researchers presenting papers, and attendees). Compared to 1996, the number of attendees
of the ILP workshop has nearly doubled. We hope to see the increasing trend also at the
ILP'98 workshop that will be organized by David Page in Madison, USA, in July 1998,
connected to ICML'98, AAAI'98, GP'98 and many other events. This will be the first of the
ILP workshop series organised in the USA.
A Compulog Net Advanced Seminar for
Professionals "Biomedical Applications of Computational Logic and Machine Learning''
was organised in Bled, Slovenia, on November 11. Five lecturers (two from UK and three
from Slovenia) addressed an audience of about 30 participants.
Nada Lavraťc
J. Stefan Institute
Jamova 39, 1001 Ljubljana, Slovenia
phone +386 61 1773272
fax +386 61 1251038 or +386 61 219 385
Email: Nada.Lavrac@ijs.si |