06 Learning Systems

RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
Learning Systems : AI Course Lecture 31 – 34, notes, slides

www.myreaders.info/ , RC Chakraborty, e-mail [email protected] , June 01, 2010
www.myreaders.info/html/artificial_intelligence.html
Learning System
Artificial Intelligence
Learning systems, topics : Definition, learning agents, components

of learning system, paradigms of machine learning. Rote Learning :
learning by memorization, learning something by repeating.
Learning from example : Induction, Winston's learning, Version
spaces - learning algorithm (generalization and specialization tree),
Decision trees - ID3 algorithm. Explanation Based Learning (EBL) :
general approach, EBL architecture, EBL system, generalization
problem, explanation structure. Discovery : theory driven – AM
system, data driven - BACON system. Clustering : distance
functions, K-mean clustering algorithm. Learning by analogy;
Neural Net – Perceptron; Genetic Algorithm. Reinforcement
Learning : RL Problem, agent - environment interaction, RL tasks,
Markov system, Markov decision processes, agent’s learning task,
policy, reward function, maximize reward, value functions.
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
Learning System
Artificial Intelligence
Topics
(Lectures 31, 32, 33, 34 4 hours) Slides
1. What is 03-09
Learning
Definition, learning agents, components of learning system; Paradigms
of machine learning.
2. Rote Learning 10
Learning by memorization, Learning something by repeating.
3. Learning from Example : Induction

11-38
Winston's learning, Version spaces - learning algorithm (generalization
and specialization tree), Decision trees - ID3 algorithm.
4. Explanation Based Learning (EBL)
39-43
General approach, EBL architecture, EBL system, Generalization
problem, Explanation structure.
5. Discovery
44-52
Theory driven – AM system, Data driven - BACON system
6. Clustering
53-62
Distance functions, K-mean clustering –
algorithm.
7. Analogy 63
8. Neural net and Genetic Learning

64-67
Neural Net – Perceptron; Genetic learning - Genetic
Algorithm.
9. Reinforcement Learning
68-80
RL Problem : Agent - environment interaction, key Features; RL tasks,
Markov system, Markov decision processes, Agent’s learning task,
Policy, Reward function, Maximize reward, Value functions.
10 References 81
02
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
Learning
Machine Learning
What is learning ? Some Quotations
• Herbert Simon, 1983

Learning denotes changes in a system that enable a system to do the same
task more efficiently the next time.
• Marvin Minsky, 1986

Learning is making useful changes in the workings of our minds.
• Ryszard Michalski, 1986

Learning is constructing or modifying representations of what is being
experienced.
• Mitchell, 1997
A computer program is said to learn from experience E with respect to
some class of tasks T and performance measure P, if its performance at
tasks in T, as measured by P, improves with experience E.
03
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
AI -
1. What is Learning Learning
Learning denotes changes in a system that enable the system to do the

same task more efficiently next time.
Learning is an important feature of “Intelligence”.
1.1 Definition
A computer program is said to learn from experience E with respect to

some class of tasks T and performance measure P, if its performance at
tasks in T, as measured by P, improves with experience E. (Mitchell 1997)
This means :
Given : A task T
A performance measure P
Some experience E with the task
Goal : Generalize the experience in a way that allows to
improve your performance on the task.
Why do you require Machine Learning ?
■ Understand and improve efficiency of human learning.
■ Discover new things or structure that is unknown to humans.
■ Fill in skeletal or incomplete specifications about a domain.
04
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
1.2 Learning Agents
An agent is an entity that is capable of perceiving and do action.

An agent can be viewed as perceiving its environment through sensors and
acting upon that environment through actuators.
Environment Sensors Actuators

Agent
Human agent Eyes, ears, etc Leg, hands, mouth
Robotic agent Cameras, IR range finders motors
Software agent Key stroke, File contents Displays to screen,

write files
In computer science an agent is a software agent that assists users

and acts in performing computer-related tasks.
05
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
• Intelligent Agent (Learning Agent)

Agent is an entity that is capable of perceiving and do action.
In computer science an agent is a software agent.
In artificial intelligence, the term used for agent is an intelligent
agent. Learning is an important feature of “Intelligence”.
Percept : agent's perceptual inputs
Percept sequence : history of everything the agent has
perceived Agent function : describes agent’s behavior
Agent program : Implements agent's function
Learning Agent consist of four main components :
◊ Learning element,
◊ Performance element,
◊ Critic, and
◊ Problem generator.
Components of a Learning System

Performance
standard
Critic Percepts
Sensors
E
N
feed back V
changes R
Learning Element Performance O
Element N
knowledge M
learning goals E
N
Effectors T
Actions
Problem
Generator
Learning Agent
The components are described in the next slide.

06
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
• Components of a Learning System
■ Performance Element: The Performance Element is the agent itself that
acts in the world. It takes in percepts and decides on external actions.

■ Learning Element: It responsible for making improvements, takes
knowledge about performance element and some feedback,

determines how to modify performance element.
■ Critic: Tells the Learning Element how agent is doing (success or
failure) by comparing with a fixed standard of performance.

■ Problem Generator: Suggests problems or actions that will generate
new examples or experiences that will aid in training the system

further.
Example : Automated Taxi on city roads
■ Performance Element: Consists of knowledge and procedures for
driving actions.
e.g., turning, accelerating, braking are performance element on roads.
■ Learning Element: Formulates goals.
e.g., learn rules for braking, accelerating, learn geography of the city.
■ Critic: Observes world and passes information to learning element.
e.g. , quick right turn across three lanes of traffic, observe reaction
of other drivers.
■ Problem Generator: Try south city road .
07
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
1.2 Paradigms of Machine Learning
■ Rote Learning: Learning by memorization; One-to-one mapping from
inputs to stored representation; Association-based storage and

retrieval.
■ Induction: Learning from examples; A form of supervised learning,
uses specific examples to reach general conclusions; Concepts are

learned from sets of labeled instances.
■ Clustering: Discovering similar group; Unsupervised, Inductive

learning in which natural classes are found for data instances, as
well as ways of classifying them.
■ Analogy: Determine correspondence between two different

representations that come from Inductive learning in which a system
transfers knowledge from one database into another database of a
different domain.
08
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
■ Discovery: Learning without the help from a teacher; Learning is

both inductive and deductive. It is deductive if it proves
theorems and discovers concepts about those theorems. It is
inductive when it raises conjectures (guess). It is unsupervised,
specific goal not given.
■ Genetic Algorithms: Inspired by natural evolution; In the natural
world, the organisms that are poorly suited for an environment die off,
while those well-suited for it prosper. Genetic algorithms search the
space of individuals for good candidates. The "goodness" of an
individual is measured by some fitness function. Search takes place in
parallel, with many individuals in each generation.
■ Reinforcement: Learning from feedback (+ve or -ve reward) given

at end of a sequence of steps. Unlike supervised learning, the
reinforcement learning takes place in an environment where the
agent cannot directly compare the results of its action to a
desired result. Instead, it is given some reward or punishment that
relates to its actions. It may win or lose a game, or be told it has
made a good move or a poor one. The job of reinforcement learning is
to find a successful function using these rewards.
09
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
AI – Rote
2. Rote Learning Learning
Rote learning technique avoids understanding the inner complexities but

focuses on memorizing the material so that it can be recalled by the
learner exactly the way it was read or heard.
• Learning by Memorization which avoids understanding the inner

complexities the subject that is being learned; Rote learning instead
focuses on memorizing the material so that it can be recalled by the
learner exactly the way it was read or heard.
• Learning something by Repeating over and over and over again;

saying the same thing and trying to remember how to say it; it
does not help us to understand; it helps us to remember, like we learn a
poem, or a song, or something like that by rote learning.
10
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
AI –Learning from example :
3. Learning from Example : Induction Induction
A process of learning by example. The system tries to induce a general rule

from a set of observed instances. The learning methods extract rules and
patterns out of massive data sets.
The learning processes belong to supervised learning, does classification and
constructs class definitions, called induction or concept learning.
The techniques used for constructing class definitions (or concept leaning) are :
• Winston's Learning program
• Version Spaces
• Decision Trees
Note : The Decision tree technique has been explained in all details
while other two techniques are briefly described in the next few slides.
11
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
3.1 Winston's Learning
Winston (1975) described a Blocks World Learning program. This

program operated in a simple blocks domain. The goal is to construct
representation of the definition of concepts in the blocks domain.
Example : Concepts such a "house".
■ Start with input, a line drawing of a blocks world

structure. It learned Concepts House, Tent, Arch as :
brick (rectangular block) with a wedge (triangular block) suitably
placed on top of it, tent – as 2 wedges touching side by side, or an

arch – as 2 non-touching bricks supporting a third wedge or brick.
■ The program for Each concept is learned through near miss. A near
miss is an object that is not an instance of the concept but a very

similar to such instances.
■ The program uses procedures to analyze the drawing and construct a
semantic net representation.
■ An example of such an structural for the house is shown below.
Object - house Semantic net
Wedge Brick A
has-part has-part
Supported - by
B C
isa isa
■ Node A represents entire structure, which is composed of two parts
: node B, a Wedge, and node C, a Brick.

Links in network include supported-by, has-part, and isa.
12
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
• Winston's Program
■ Winston's program followed 3 basic steps in concept formulation:
1. Select one known instance of the concept.

Call this the concept definition.
2. Examine definitions of other known instance of the concept.
Generalize the definition to include them.
3. Examine descriptions of near misses.
Restrict the definition to exclude these.
■ Both steps 2 and 3 of this procedure rely heavily on comparison

process by which similarities and differences between structures
can be detected.
■ Winston's program can be similarly applied to learn other concepts

such as "ARCH".
13
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
3.2 Version Spaces
A Version Space is a hierarchical representation of knowledge that

keeps track of all the useful information supplied by a sequence of
learning examples without remembering any of the examples. The
version space method is a concept learning process. It is another
approach to learning by Mitchell (1977).
• Version Space Characteristics
■ Represents all the alternative plausible descriptions of a heuristic.

A plausible description is one that is applicable to all known +ve
examples and no known -ve example.
■ A version space description consists of two complementary trees:

‡ one, contains nodes connected to overly general models, and
‡ other, contains nodes connected to overly specific models.
■ Node values/attributes are discrete.
• Fundamental Assumptions
■ The data is correct ie no erroneous instances.
■ A correct description is a conjunction of some attributes with values.
14
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
• Version Space Methods
A version space is a hierarchical representation of knowledge.

Version space method is a concept learning process accomplished by
managing multiple models within a version space.
It is specialization of general models and generalization of specific models.
Version Space diagram described below consists : a Specialization tree
(colored Blue) and a Generalization tree (colored green) .

Top 1st row : the top of the tree, we have the
most general hypotheses.
Top 2nd row : This row is an expanded version of

the first. This row of hypotheses is slightly more
specific than the root node.
Top 3rd row : As training data (positive

examples) is processed, the inconsistent nodes
are removed from the general specification.
Finally, we converge to a solution.
Bottom 3rd row : Any hypothesis that is

inconsistent with the training data (negative
instances) is removed from the tree.
Bottom 2nd row : The specific hypothesis is

expanded to form more nodes that are slightly
more general.
Bottom 1st row : This is the most specific

hypothesis.
Version Space diagram
Tree nodes :
‡ each node is connected to a model.
‡ nodes in the generalization tree are connected to a model that
matches everything in its sub-tree.
‡ nodes in the specialization tree are connected to a model that
matches only one thing in its sub-tree.
Links between nodes :
‡ denotes generalization relations in a generalization tree, and
‡ denotes specialization relations in a specialization tree.
15
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
• Version Space Convergence
Generalization and Specialization leads to Version Space convergence.
The key idea in version space learning is that specialization of the general
models and generalization of the specific models may ultimately lead
to just one correct model that matches all observed positive examples
and does not match any negative examples. This means :
■ Each time a +ve example is used to specialize the general models,

then those specific models that match the -ve example are eliminated.
■ Each time a -ve example is used to generalize the specific models,

those general models that fail to match the +ve example are
eliminated.
■ Finally, the positive and negative examples may be such that only one
general model and one identical specific model survive.
16
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
• Version Space Learning Algorithm: Candidate – Elimination
The Candidate – Elimination algorithm finds all describable hypotheses

that are consistent with the observed training examples.
The version space method handles +ve and -ve examples symmetrically.
■ Given : A representation language and a set of positive and

negative examples expressed in that language.
■ Compute : A concept description that is consistent with all the
positive examples and none of the negative examples.
Note : The methodology / algorithm is explained in the next slide.

17
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
[Continued from previous slide - version space]
• Version Space Search Algorithm
‡ Let G be the set of maximally general hypotheses.

Initialize G, to contain most general pattern, a null description.
‡ Let S be the set of maximally specific hypotheses.

Initialize S, to contain one element : the first positive example.
‡ Accept a new training example.

◊ For each new positive training example p do :
1. Delete all members of G that fail to match p ;
2. For every s in S do
If s does not match p, then replace s with its maximally
specific generalizations that match p;
3. Delete from S any hypothesis that is subsumed, a more
comprehensive, by other hypothesis in S;
4. Delete from S any hypothesis more general than some hypothesis in
G.
◊ For each new negative training example n do :
1. Delete all members of S that match n;
2. For each g in G do
If g match n, then replace g with its maximally
general specializations that do not match n;
3. Delete from G any hypothesis more specific than some other
hypothesis in G;
4. Delete from G any hypothesis that is not more general than some
hypothesis in S;
◊ If S and G are both singleton sets, then
1. If they are identical, output their value and halt.
2. If they are different, the training cases were inconsistent; output this
result and halt.
3. Else continue accepting new training examples.
‡ The algorithm stops when it runs out of data;

1. If 0 , no consistent description for the data in the language.
2. If 1 , answer (version space converges).
3. If 2 , all descriptions in the language are implicitly included.
18
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
• Version Space – Problem 1

Learning the concept of "Japanese Economy Car"
[Ref: E. Rich, K. Knight, "Artificial Intelligence", McGraw Hill, Second Edition]
Examples 1 to 5 of features
Country of Origin, Manufacturer, Color, Decade, Type
Example Origin Manufacturer Color Decade Type Example Type
1. Japan Honda Blue 1980 Economy Positive
2. Japan Toyota Green 1970 Sports Negative
3. Japan Toyota Blue 1990 Economy Positive
4. USA Chrysler Red 1980 Economy Negative
5. Japan Honda White 1980 Economy Positive
Step by step solution : Symbol for Prune
1. Initialize : to maximally general and maximally specific hypotheses
‡ Initialize G to a null description, means all features are variables.

G = { (?, ?, ?, ?, ?) }
‡ Initialize S to a set of maximally specific hypotheses;

Apply a positive example;
Apply Example 1 (Japan, Honda, Blue, 1980, Economy)
S = { (Japan, Honda, Blue, 1980, Economy) }
‡ Resulting Specialization (blue) and Generalization (green)

tree nodes
G= ( ?, ?, ?, ?, ? )
S = {(Japan, Honda, Blue, 1980, Economy)}
These two models represent the most general and the most specific
heuristics one might learn.
The actual heuristic to be learned, "Japanese economy car",

probably lies between them somewhere within the version space.
19
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
2. Apply Example 2 (Japan, Toyota, Green, 1970,
Sports) It is a negative example.

‡ Specialize G, to exclude the negative example;
i.e., G must be specialized in such a way that the negative example is
no longer in the version space.
The available specializations are :
G = { (?, Honda, ?, ?, ?), (?, ?, Blue, ?, ?), (?, ?, ?, 1980, ?),
(?, ?, ?, ?, Economy) }

tree nodes and links
G = ( ?, ?, ?, ?, ? )
(?, Honda, ?, ?, ?) (?, ?, Blue, ?, ?) (?, ?, ?, 1980, ?) (?, ?, ?, ?, Economy)
20
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
3. Apply Example 3 (Japan, Toyota, Blue, 1990,

Economy) It is a positive example.
‡ Prune G , to exclude descriptions inconsistent with the positive
example; i.e., remove from the G set any descriptions that are
inconsistent with the positive example. The new G set is
G = { (?, ?, Blue, ?, ?), (?, ?, ?, ?, Economy) }
‡ Generalize S, to include the new example. The new S set is

S = { (Japan, ? , Blue, ? , Economy) }

tree nodes and links :
G = ( ?, ?, ?, ?, ? )
(?, Honda, ?, ?, ?) (?, ?, Blue, ?, ?) (?, ?, ?, 1980, ?) (?, ?, ?, ?, Economy)
S = {(Japan, ?, Blue, ?, Economy)}
‡ At this point, the new G and S sets specify a version space that
can be translated roughly in to English as : The concept may be as
specific as "Japanese, blue economy car".
21
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
4. Apply Example 4 (USA, Chrysler, Red, 1980,
Economy) It is another negative example.

‡ Specialize G to exclude the negative example; (but stay consistent
with S) i.e.; G set must avoid covering this new example.
The new G set is
G = { (?, ?, Blue, ?, ?), (Japan, ?, ?, ?, Economy) }
‡ Prune away all the specific models that match the negative example.
No match found therefore no change in S
S = { (Japan, ?, Blue, ?, Economy) }

G = ( ?, ?, ?, ?, ? )
(?, ?, ?, ?, Economy)
(Japan, ?, Blue, ?, ?)
S = {(Japan, ?, ?, ?, Economy)}
‡ It is now clear that the car must be Japanese, because all description in
the version space contain Japan as origin.
22
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
5. Apply Example 5 (Japan, Honda, White, 1980, Economy)
It is positive example.
‡ Prune G to exclude descriptions inconsistent with positive example.
G = { (Japan, ?, ?, ?, Economy) }
‡ Generalize S to include this positive example.

S = { (Japan, ?, ?, ?, Economy) }

G = ( ?, ?, ?, ?, ? )
(?, ?, ?, ?, Economy)
(?, ?, Blue, ?, ?)
‡ Thus, finally G and S are singleton sets and S = G.

The algorithm has converged. No more examples needed.
Algorithm G = ( ?, ?, ?, ?, ? )
stops.
G = {(?, ?, ?, ?, Economy)}
G = {(Japan, ?, ?, ?, Economy)}
23
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
3.3 Decision Trees

Decision trees are powerful tools for classification and prediction.
Decision trees represent rules. Rules are easily expressed so that humans
can understand them or even directly use in a database access language
like SQL so that records falling into a particular category may be
retrieved.
• Description
■ Decision tree is a classifier in the form of a tree structure where each

node is either a leaf or decision node.
‡ leaf node – indicates the target attribute (class) values of examples.
‡ decision node – specify test to be carried on an attribute-value.
■ Decision tree is a typical inductive approach to learn knowledge on

classification. The conditions are :
‡ Attribute-value description: Object or case must be expressible as
a fixed collection of properties or attributes having discrete

values.
‡ Predefined classes : Categories to which examples are to be
assigned must already be defined (ie supervised data).

‡ Discrete classes: Classes must be sharply delineated; continuous
classes broken up into vague categories as "hard", "flexible",
"soft".
‡ Sufficient data: Enough training cases to distinguish valid patterns.
• Example : A simple decision tree
A A Decision node
C=red K=y
C=blue Leaf node
A
A
B < 4.5
B ≥ 4.5 B ≥ 8.1 B < 8.1
K=y K=y K=y A
C=true C=false
K=y K=y
24
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
• Algorithm to generate a Decision Tree
A decision tree program constructs a decision tree T from a set of

training cases. The advantage of a decision tree learning is that a
program, rather than a knowledge engineer, elicits knowledge from an
expert.
ID3 Algorithm (Iterative Dichotomiser 3)
ID3 is based on the Concept Learning System (CLS) algorithm, developed

J. Ross Quinlan, at the University of Sydney in 1975.
■ Description
‡ ID3 builds a decision tree from a set of "examples".

The "examples" have several attributes.
They belong to a class (yes or no).
‡ Leaf nodes contain the class name.
‡ Decision node is an attribute test .

25
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
■ Attribute Selection
How does ID3 decide which attribute is the best?

There are different criteria to select which attribute will become a test
attribute in a given branch of a tree. A well known criteria is
information gain. It uses a log function with a base of 2, to determine
the number of bits necessary to represent a piece of information.
‡ Entropy measures information content in an attribute.
Shannon defines information entropy in terms of a discrete random
variable X , with possible states (or outcomes) x1. . . xn as:
H(X) = n n
 p(xi) • log2 ( 1/p(xi) ) = -  p(xi) • log2 p(xi)
i= i=
1 1
where p(xi) = P (X = xi) is the probability of the ith outcome of X.
‡ Information gain of an attribute X with respect to class attribute Y.
Let Y and X are discrete variables that take values in

{y1 . . . yi . . . yk} and {x1 . . . xj . . . xl} .
The information gain of a given attribute X with respect to the

class attribute Y is the reduction in uncertainty about the value of
Y when we know the value of X, is called I(Y ; X).
Uncertainty
Uncertainty about the value of Y is measured by its entropy, H(Y).
uncertainty about the value of Y when we know the value of X is
given by the conditional entropy of Y given X, i.e., H(Y |X).
Information Gain of a given attribute X with respect to the

class attribute Y is given by : I(Y ; X) = H(Y ) - H(Y |X). where
H(Y) = k
- ∑ yi=1 p(yi) • log2 p(yi) is the initial entropy in Y,
l
H(Y |X) = ∑ xj=1 p(xj) • H(Y |xj) is conditional entropy of Y
given X where H(Y |xj) = - l

∑ xj= p (yi | xj) • log2 p(yi | xj) is
1
the entropy in Y given a particular answer xj .
26
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
■ Example
Decide if the weather is amenable to play Golf or Baseball.
‡ Training Data Collected are Over 2 weeks
Day Outlook Temp Humidity wind Play

1 sunny 85 85 week no
2 sunny 80 90 strong no
3 cloudy 83 78 week yes
4 rainy 70 96 week yes
6 rainy 65 70 strong no
7 cloudy 64 65 strong yes
8 sunny 72 95 week no
9 sunny 69 70 week yes
11 sunny 75 70 strong yes
12 cloudy 72 90 strong yes
13 cloudy 81 75 week yes
14 rainy 71 85 strong no
‡ Learning set
In the above example, two attributes, the Temperature and
Humidity have continuous ranges. ID3 requires them to be
discrete like hot, medium, cold, high, normal. Table below
indicates the acceptable values.
Attribute Possible Values

Outlook Sunny Cloudy Rainy
Temperature Hot Medium Cold
Humidity High Normal
Wind Strong Week
Class play no play
Decision n (negative) p (positive)
27
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
‡ Assign discrete values to the Attributes
Partition the continuous attribute values to make them discrete,

following the key mentioned below.
Temperature : Hot (H) 80 to 85 Medium (M) 70 to 75 Cold (C) 64 to 69
Humidity : High (H) 81 to 96 Normal (N) 65 to 80
Class : Yes (Y) play No (N) no play
Day Outlook Temp Humidity Wind Class (play)

1 Sunny 85 Hot 85 High week no
2 Sunny 80 Hot 90 High strong no
3 Cloudy 83 Hot 78 High week yes
4 Rainy 70 Medium 96 High week yes
5 Rainy 68 Cold 80 Normal week yes
6 Rainy 65 Cold 70 Normal strong no
7 Cloudy 64 Cold 65 Normal strong yes
8 Sunny 72 Medium 95 High week no
9 Sunny 69 Cold 70 Normal week yes
10 Rainy 75 Medium 80 Normal week yes
11 Sunny 75 Medium 70 Normal strong yes
12 Cloudy 72 Medium 90 High strong yes
13 Cloudy 81 Hot 75 Normal week yes
14 Rainy 71 Medium 85 High strong no
28
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
‡ Attribute Selection
By applying definitions of Entropy and Information gain
◊ Entropy : From the definition, When Y is a discrete variables

that take values in {y1 . . . yi . . . yk} then the entropy of
Y is given by H(Y)
k k
H(Y) =  p(yi) • log2 ( 1/p(yi) ) = -  p(yi) • log2 p(yi)
i= i=
1 1
where p(yi) is the probability of the ith outcome of Y.

Apply his definition to the example stated before :
Given, S is a collection of 14 examples with 9 YES and 5 NO
then Entropy(S) = - (9/14) Log2 (9/14) - (5/14) Log2 (5/14)
= 0.940
Note that S is not an attribute but the entire sample set.

Entropy range from 0 ("perfectly classified") to 1 ("totally random").
[Continued in next slide]

29
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
[Continued from previous slide – Attribute election]
◊ Information Gain : From the definition, a given attribute X
with respect to the class attribute Y is given by :

I(Y ; X) = H(Y ) - H(Y |X) where
k
H(Y) =  p(yi) • log2 p(yi) is the initial entropy in Y,
- yi=1
l
 p(xj) • H(Y |xj) is conditional entropy of Y
H(Y |X) = xj= l
1
given X where H(Y |xj) = -  p (yi | xj) • log2 p(yi | xj) is
xj=1
entropy in Y given a particular answer xj .

Apply this definition to the example stated above :
Information Gain (S, A) of the example set S on attribute A is
Gain(S, A) = Entropy(S) - ∑ ((|Sv| / |S|) * Entropy(Sv)) where
∑ sum over each value v of all possible values of attribute

A Sv is subset of S for which attribute A has value v
|Sv| is number of elements in Sv
|S| is number of elements in S
Given, S is a set of 14 examples, in which one of the attributes is

wind speed. The values of Wind can be Weak or Strong. The
classification of these 14 examples are 9 YES and 5 NO. Given, for
attribute wind :
8 occurrences of wind = weak and
6 occurrences of wind = strong.
For wind = weak, 6 of the examples are YES and 2 are NO.
For wind = strong, 3 of the examples are YES and 3 are NO.
Gain(S, wind) = Entropy(S) - (8/14) • Entropy(S weak)
– (6/14) • Entropy(Sstrong)
= 0.940 - (8/14) • 0.811 - (6/14) • 1.00 = 0.048
Entropy(Sweak) = - (6/8) • log2(6/8) - (2/8) • log2(2/8) = 0.811

Entropy(Sstrong) = - (3/6) • log2(3/6) - (3/6) • log2(3/6) = 1.00
For each attribute, the gain is calculated and the highest gain is
used in the decision node.
30
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
‡ Step-by-Step Calculations : Ref. Training data stated before
◊ Step 01 : "example" set S

The set S of 14 examples is with 9 ‘yes’ and 5 ‘no’ then
Entropy(S) = – (9/14) Log2 (9/14) – (5/14) Log2 (5/14) = 0.940
◊ Step 02 : Attribute Outlook

Outlook value can be sunny, cloudy or
rainy. Outlook = sunny is of occurrences 5
Outlook = cloudy is of occurrences 4
Outlook = rainy is of occurrences 5
Outlook = sunny, 2 of the examples are ‘yes’ and 3 are ‘no’
Outlook = cloudy, 4 of the examples are ‘yes’ and 0 are ‘no’
Outlook = rainy, 3 of the examples are ‘yes’ and 2 are ‘no’
Entropy(Ssunny)
= – (2/5) x log2(2/5) – (3/5) x log2(3/5) = 0.970950
Entropy(Scloudy)
= – (4/4) x log2(4/4) – (0/4) x log2(0/4) = 0
Entropy(Srainy)
= – (3/5) x log2(3/5) – (2/5) x log2(2/5) = 0.970950
Gain(S, Outlook) = Entropy(S) – (5/14) x Entropy(Sunny)

– (4/14) x Entropy(Scloud)
– (5/14) x Entropy(Srainy)
= 0.940 - (5/14) x 0.97095059 – (4/14) x 0
- (5/14) x 0.97095059
= 0.940 - 0.34676 - 0 - 0.34676
= 0. 246
31
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
◊ Step 03 : Attribute Temperature

Temp value can be hot, medium or cold.
Temp = hot is of occurrences 4
Temp = medium is of occurrences 6
Temp = cold is of occurrences 4
Temp = hot, 2 of the examples are ‘yes’ and 2 are ‘no’
Temp = medium, 4 of the examples are ‘yes’ and 2 are ‘no’
Temp = cold, 3 of the examples are ‘yes’ and 1 are ‘no’
Entropy(Shot)
= – (2/4)x log2(2/4) – (2/4) x log2(2/4) = -0.99999999
Entropy(Smedium)
= – (4/6)x log2(4/6) – (2/6) x log2(2/6) = -0.91829583
Entropy(Scold)
= – (3/4)x log2(3/4) – (1/4) x log2(1/4) = -0.81127812
Gain(S, Temp) = Entropy(S) – (4/14) x Entropy(Shot)

– (6/14) x Entropy(Smedium)
– (4/14) x Entropy(Scold)
= 0.940 - (4/14) x 0.99999 – (6/14) x 0.91829583
- (4/14) x 0.81127812
= 0.940 - 0.2857142 -0.393555 - 0.2317937
= 0 . 0289366072
32
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
◊ Step 04 : Attribute Humidity

Humidity value can be high, normal.
Humidity = high is of occurrences 7
Humidity = normal is of occurrences 7
Humidity = high, 3 of the examples are ‘yes’ and 4 are ‘no’
Humidity = normal, 6 of the examples are ‘yes’ and 1 are
‘no’
Entropy(Shigh)
= – (3/7) x log2(3/7) – (4/7) x log2(4/7) = -0.9852281
Entropy(Snormal)
= – (6/7) x log2(6/7) – (1/7) x log2(1/7) = -0.5916727
Gain(S, Humidity) = Entropy(S) – (7/14) x Entropy(Shigh)

– (7/14) x Entropy(Snomal)
= 0.940 - (7/14) x 0.9852281 – (7/14) x 0.5916727
= 0.940 - 0.49261405 - 0.29583635
= 0 . 1515496
33
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
◊ Step 05 : Attribute wind

Wind value can be weak or strong.
Wind = week is of occurrences 8
Wind = strong is of occurrences 6
Wind = weak, 6 of the examples are ‘yes’ and 2 are
‘no’ Wind = strong, 3 of the examples are ‘yes’ and 3 are
‘no’
Entropy(Sweak)
= – (6/8) x log2(6/8) – (2/8) x log2(2/8) = 0.811
Entropy(Sstrong)
= – (3/6) x log2(3/6) – (3/6) x log2(3/6) = 1.00
Gain(S, Wind) = Entropy(S) – (8/14) x Entropy(Sweak) –

(6/14) x Entropy(Sstrong)
= 0.940 – (8/14) x 0.811 – (6/14)*1.00
= 0.048
34
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
◊ Step 06 : Summary of results are

Entropy(S) = 0.940
Gain(S, Outlook) = 0. 246
Gain(S, Temp) = 0.0289366072
Gain(S, Humidity) = 0 . 1515496
Gain(S, Wind) = 0.048
◊ Step 07 : Find which attribute is the root node.
Gain(S, Outlook) = 0 . 246 is highest.

Therefore "Outlook" attribute is the decision attribute in the root node.
"Outlook" as root node has three possible values - sunny, cloudy, rain.
S.No Day Outlook Temp Humidity Wind Play

1 11 sunny 75 Medium 70 Normal strong yes
2 2 sunny 80 Hot 90 High strong no
3 1 sunny 85 Hot 85 High week no
4 8 sunny 72 Medium 95 High week no
5 9 sunny 69 Cold 70 Normal week yes
6 12 cloudy 72 Medium 90 High strong yes
7 3 cloudy 83 Hot 78 High week yes
8 7 cloudy 64 Cold 65 Normal strong yes
9 13 cloudy 81 Hot 75 Normal week yes
10 14 rainy 71 Medium 85 High strong no
11 6 rainy 65 Cold 70 Normal strong no
12 10 rainy 75 Medium 80 Normal week yes
13 5 rainy 68 Cold 80 Normal week yes
14 4 rainy 70 Medium 96 High week yes
35
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
◊ Step 08 : Find which attribute is next decision node.
Outlook has three possible values,

so root node has three branches (sunny, cloudy, rain).
Ssunny = {D1, D2, D8, D9, D11} = 5 "examples". "D" represent "Days".
With outlook = sunny
Gain(Ssunny, Humidity) = 0.970
Gain(Ssunny, Temp) = 0.570
Gain(Ssunny, Wind) = 0.019
Humidity has the highest gain 0.970 is next decision node.
◊ Step 09 : This process goes on until all days data are classified
perfectly or run out of attributes.

36
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
■ Thus, the classification tree built using ID3 algorithm is shown

below. It tells if the weather was amenable to play ?
Outlook
sunnycloudy rainy
Humidity Yes play Wind

D3 D7 D12 D13
High Normal Strong Weak
No play Yes play No play Yes play

D1 D2 D8 D9 D11 D6 D14 D4 D5
Decision
37
tree
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
■ Applications
‡ ID3 is easy to use.

‡ Its primary use is replacing the expert who would normally
build a classification tree by hand.
‡ ID3 has been incorporated in a number of commercial rule-
induction packages.
‡ Some specific applications include
◊ medical diagnosis,
◊ credit risk assessment of loan applications,
◊ equipment malfunctions by their cause,
◊ classification of plant diseases, and
◊ web search classification.
38
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
AI – Explanation Based Learning
4. Explanation Based Learning (EBL) (EBL)
Humans appear to learn quite a lot from one example.

Human learning is accomplished by examining particular situations and relating
them to the background knowledge in the form of known general principles.
This kind of learning is called "Explanation Based Learning (EBL)".
4.1 General Approach

EBL is abstracting a general concept from a particular training example.
EBL is a technique to formulate general concepts on the basis of a specific
training example. EBL analyses the specific training example in terms of
domain knowledge and the goal concept. The result of EBL is an
explanation structure, that explains why the training example is an
instance of the goal concept. The explanation-structure is then used as
the basis for formulating the general concept.
Thus, EBL provides a way of generalizing a machine-generated
explanation of a situation into rules that apply not only to the current
situation but to similar ones as well.
4.2 EBL Architecture

The overall architecture of the EBL learning method.
Inputs
Specific Partial
goal / external
problem solution
Knowledge Problem solver (under-

base stander)
New general Explanation

concept
Generalizer
39
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
4.3 EBL System Schematic

The schematic below shows explanation based learning.
Explanation Based Learning

Domain Traini Operationali
theory ng ty criterion
Exam
ple
Goal Resul
Conce ts
pt general
trace
Problem Generalizer trace Operatio
solver nality
pruner
• Input to EBL :
The blocks color yellow are external to EBL.
They are the 4 different kinds of input that EBL algorithm accepts.
1. Training example - Situation description, facts .
An example is a set of facts describing an instance of the goal concept.
2. Goal concept - Some predicate calculus statements .
A high level description of concept that the program is supposed to

learn; e.g., the definition of an object "Cup" in function-structure
involves functional properties (lift-able, stable, open-vessel . . .) rather
than structural features (light, part of, pointing . . .).
3. Domain theory - Inference rules .
It represents facts and rules that constitute what the learner knows.
The facts describe an instance of the goal concept and the rules
describe relationships between objects and actions in a domain; e.g.,
the cup domain includes facts: concavities, bases, and lugs , as well as
rules: about lift ability, stability and what makes an open vessel .
4. Operational criterion - description of concepts .
A description in an appropriate form of the final concept.

A predicate from domain theory over concept definition, specifying the
form in which the learned concept definition must be expressed.
40
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
■ Description of EBL algorithm
Given the four inputs just described, the task is to construct an

explanation in terms of the domain theory and then determine a set of
sufficient conditions under which the explanation holds.
Thus, EBL algorithm consisting of two stages:
1. Explain: Construct an explanation in terms of the domain theory that
shows how the training example satisfies the goal concept definition.
This explanation must be constructed so that each branch of the
explanation structure terminates in an expression that satisfies the
operationality criterion.
2. Generalize: Determine a set of sufficient conditions under which the
explanation holds, stated in terms that satisfy the operationality
criterion. This is accomplished by regressing (back propagating) the goal
concept through the explanation structure. The conjunction of the
resulting expressions constitutes the desired concept definition.
Algorithm : The step involved are
1. Given an example, an "explanation" is first constructed by applying a

problem solver to relate the example to some general domain theory.
The result of this operation is a trace or "proof" of the example with
respect to the theory.
2. Next, generalizes the explanation using the method of goal regression.

This involves traversing the tree from top to bottom, replacing constants
by variables, but just those constants that are not embedded in the rules
or facts used to create the proof. The result of this operation is the
generalized proof tree.
3. The tree is then pruned by removing irrelevant leaf nodes until no

operational predicates appear at internal nodes. The result of this
operation is that explanation structure satisfies the operationality
criterion that applies to other examples too.
4. Finally, the operational rules are extracted from the general explanation.
The definition of the target concept is conjunction of the remaining leaf
nodes.
41
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
4.4 Example : "CUP" Generalization problem
The EBL methodology described before is applied to concept "CUP".

The training example, domain theory, goal concept, operationality
criterion, and a proof tree generalization using a goal regression
technique are presented. The logical operators used are
^ and; implies; if .. then; if and only if; iff
Goal Concept
lift-able(x) ^ stable(x) ^ open-vessel(x) cup(x)
Training example
colour(Obj23, Blue) ^ has-part(Obj23, Handle16) ^ has-part(Obj23, Bottom19)
^ owner(Obj23, Ralph) ^ has-part(Obj23, Concavity12) ^ is(Obj23, Light) ^
is(Ralph, Male) ^ isa(Handle16,Handle) ^ isa(Bottom19, Bottom) ^
is(Bottom19, Flat) ^ isa(Concavity12, Concavity) ^
is(Concavity12, Upward-Pointing)
Domain theory
has-part(x,y) ^ isa(y,Concavity) ^ is(y, Upward-Pointing) open-vessel(x)
is(x, Light) ^ has-part(x,y) ^ isa(y,Handle) liftable(x)
has-part(x,y) ^ isa(y, Bottom) ^ is(y,Flat) stable(x)
Operationality Criterion
The concept definition is expressed in terms of structural features.

The first stage of the EBL process is to show why the training example is an
example of a cup. This represents a proof.
This proof is expressed only in terms of the operationality criterion and
irrelevant details discarded relating to the Owner and Color.
Explanation structure of the cup.
42
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
Explanation Structure of the cup

The structure below represents the first stage of the EBL
process. It proofs why the training example is an example of a
cup.
Cup(Obj1)
Lift-able(Obj1) Stable(Obj1) Open-vessel(Obj1)
Is(Obj 1,light) isa( Concavity1 , Concavity)

isa( Handle1, Handle) has-part(obj1, Concavity)
has-part(Obj 1, Handle1 is(Concavity 1, Upward-
) Pointing)
isa(Concavity1 , Flat)
isa(Concavity1, Bottom)
has- part( Obj 1 , Concavity
1)
Proof tree generalization using a goal regression technique.

The above proof is now generalized by using a goal regression technique.
In this example replacing the constants with variables gives the required
generalization of the cup.
has-part(x, y) U isa(y, Concavity) U is(y, Upward-Pointing) U
has-part(x, z) U isa(z, Bottom) U is(z, Flat) U has-part(x,w)
U isa(w, Handle) U is(x, Light)
43
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
AI –Learning :
5. Discovery Discovery
Simon (1966) first proposed the idea that we might explain scientific discovery
in computational terms and automate the processes involved on a computer.
Project DENDRAL (Feigenbaum 1971) demonstrated this by inferring structures
of organic molecules from mass spectra, a problem previously solved only by
experienced chemists.
Later, a knowledge based program called AM the Automated Mathematician

(Lenat 1977) discovered many mathematical concepts.
After this, an equation discovery systems called BACON (Langley, 1981)

discovered a wide variety of empirical laws such as the ideal gas law. The
research continued during the 1980s and 1990s but reduced because the
computational biology, bioinformatics and scientific data mining have
convinced many researchers to focus on domain-specific methods. But need for
research on general principles for scientific reasoning and discovery very much
exists.
Discovery system AM relied strongly on theory-driven methods of discovery.

BACON employed data-driven heuristics to direct its search for empirical
laws.
These two discovery programs are illustrated in the next few slides.
44
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
5.1 Theory Driven Discovery
The Simon's theory driven science, means AI-modeling for theory

building. It starts with an existing theory represented in some or all
aspects in form of a symbolic model and one tries to transform the theory
to a runable program. One important reason for modeling a theory is
scientific discovery in the theory driven approach, this means the
discovery of new theoretical conclusions, gaps, or inconsistencies.
Many computational systems have been developed for modeling different
types of discoveries. The Logic Theorist (1956) was designed to prove
theorems in logic when AI did not exist. Among the more recent
systems, the Automated Mathematician AM (Lenat, 1979) is a good
example in modeling mathematical discovery.
• AM (Automated Mathematician)
AM is a heuristic driven program that discovers concepts in elementary
mathematics and set theory. AM has 2 inputs:
(a) description of some concepts of set theory: e.g. union, intersection;
(b) information on how to perform mathematics. e.g. functions.
AM have successively rediscovered concepts such as :

(a) Integers , Natural numbers, Prime Numbers;
(b) Addition, Multiplication, Factorization theorem ;
(c) Maximally divisible numbers, e.g. 12 has six divisors 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 12.

[AM is described in the next slide.]
45
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
• How does AM work ?
AM employs many general-purpose AI techniques.

The system has around 115 basic elements such as sets, lists, elementary
relations. The mathematical concepts are represented as frames. Around
250 heuristic rules are attached to slots in the concepts. The rules present
hints as how to employ functions, create new concepts, generalization etc.
about activities that might lead to interesting discoveries.
The system operates from an agenda of tasks. It selects the most

interesting task as determined by a set of over 50 heuristics. It then
performs all heuristics it can find which should help in executing it. The
heuristics represented as operators are used to generalize, to specialize or
to combine the elementary concepts or relations to make more complex
ones. Heuristics can fill in concept slots, check the content of the slots,
create new concepts, modify task agenda, interestingness levels, etc.
Because it selects the most interesting task to perform at all times, AM is
performing the best-first search in a space of mathematical concepts.
However, its numerous heuristics (over 200) guide its search very
effectively, limiting the number of concepts it creates and improving their
mathematical quality.
46
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
5.2 Data Driven Discovery
Data driven science, in contrast to theory driven, starts with empirical

data or the input-output behavior of the real system without an explicitly
given theory. The modeler tries to write a computer program which
generates the empirical data or input-output behavior of the system.
Typically, models are produced in a
generate-and-test-procedure. Generate-and-test means
writing program code which tries to model the i-o-behavior of the real
system first approximately and then improve as long as the i-o-behavior
does not correspond to the real system. A family of such discovery models
are known as BACON programs.
• BACON System
Equation discovery is the area of machine learning that develops methods

for automated discovery of quantitative laws, expressed in the form of
equations, in collections of measured data.
BACON is pioneer among equation discovery systems. BACON is a family
of algorithms for discovering scientific laws from data.

BACON.1 discovers simple numeric laws.
BACON.3 is a knowledge based system, has discovered simple empirical
laws like physicists and shown its generality by rediscovering the

Ideal gas law, Kepler's third law, Ohm's law and more.
The next few slides shows how BACON1 rediscovers Kepler’s third Law and
BACON3 rediscovers Ideal Gas Law.
47
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
• BACON.1 : Discovers simple numeric laws.

Given a set of observed values about two variables X and Y, BACON.1
finds a function Y = f(X) using four heuristics:
■ Heuristic 1 : If Y has value V in several observed cases, make
the hypothesis that Y = V in all cases.
■ Heuristic 2 : If X and Y are linearly related with slope S and intercept
I in several observed cases, then make the hypothesis that Y = S · X
+ I is in all cases.
■ Heuristic 3 : If X increases as Y decreases, and X and Y are

not linearly related define a new term T as the product of X
and Y ie., T = X · Y
■ Heuristic 4 : If X increases as Y increases, and X and Y are
not linearly related, define a new term T as the division of X by
Y ie., T = X / Y
Note : BACON1 iteratively applies these 4 heuristics until a scientific law is
discovered. Heuristics 1 and 2 detect linear relationships. Heuristics 3 and 4
detect simple non-linear relationships. Heuristics 1 and 2 produce scientific laws.
Heuristics 3 and 4 are intermediate steps.
Example : Rediscovering Kepler’s third Law

Kepler’s third Law is stated below. Assume the law is not discovered or known.
"The square of the orbital period T is proportional to the cube of the mean
distance a from the Sun." ie., T2= k a3 , k is constant
number, is same for all planets. If we measure T in years and all distances in
"astronomical units AUs" with 1 AU the mean distance between the Earth and
the Sun, then if a = 1 AU, T is one year, and k with these units just
2 3
equals 1, i.e. T = a .
■ Input : Planets, Distance from Sun ( D ) , orbit time Period ( P )

Planet D P
Mercury 0.382 0.241
Venus 0.724 0.616
Earth 1.0 1.0
Mars 1.524 1.881
Jupiter 5.199 11.855
Saturn 9.539 29.459
[continued in next slide]

48
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
AI –Learning :
■ Apply heuristics 1 to 4 : (Iteration 1) Discovery
Try heuristic 1: not applicable, neither D nor P is constant

Try heuristic 2: not applicable, no linear relationship
Try heuristic 3: not applicable, D increasing P not decreasing
Try heuristic 4: applicable, D increases as P increase,
so add new variable D/P to the data set.
Adding new variable D/P to the data set:

Planet D P D/P
Mercury 0.382 0.241 1.607
Venus 0.724 0.616 1.175
Earth 1.0 1.0 1.0
Mars 1.524 1.881 0.810
Jupiter 5.199 11.855 0.439
Saturn 9.539 29.459 0.324
■ Apply heuristics 1 to 4 : (Iteration 2)
Try heuristic 1: not applicable, D/P is not constant

Try heuristic 2: not applicable, no linear relationship between D/P and D or P
Try heuristic 3: applicable, D/P decreases as D increases and as P
increases, so the system could add two new
variables: D × (D/P) = D2/P or P × (D/P) = D
but D already exists, so add new variable D2/P
Adding new variable D2/P to the data set:

Planet D P D/P D2/P
Mercury 0.382 0.241 1.607 0.622
Venus 0.724 0.616 1.175 0.851
Earth 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0
Mars 1.524 1.881 0.810 1.234
Jupiter 5.199 11.855 0.439 2.280
Saturn 9.539 29.459 0.324 3.088
49
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
AI –Learning :
■ Apply heuristics 1 to 4 : (Iteration 3) Discovery
Try heuristic 1: not applicable, D2/P is not constant
Try heuristic 2: not applicable, D2/P is not linearly related with any other
variable
Try heuristic 3: applicable, D2/P decreases as D/P increases, so add the
new variable: (D2/P) × (D/P) = D3/P2
Adding new variable D3/P2 to the data set:

Planet D P D/P D2/P D3/P2
Mercury 0.382 0.241 1.607 0.622 1.0
Venus 0.724 0.616 1.175 0.851 1.0
Earth 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0
Mars 1.524 1.881 0.810 1.234 1.0
Jupiter 5.199 11.855 0.439 2.280 1.0
Saturn 9.539 29.459 0.324 3.088 1.0
■ Apply heuristics 1 to 4 : (Iteration 4)

Try heuristic 1: applicable,, D3/P2 is constant
■ Conclusion : D3/P2
This is Kepler’s third law. (took about 20 years to discover it !)
■ A limitation of BACON.1
It works only for target equation relating at most two variable.
50
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
BACON.3 :
BACON.3 is a knowledge based system production system that discovers
empirical laws. The main heuristics detect constancies and trends in data,
and lead to the formulation of hypotheses and the definition of theoretical
terms. The program represents information at varying levels of
description. The lowest levels correspond to direct observations, while the
highest correspond to hypotheses that explain everything so far observed.
BACON.3 is built on top of BACON.1.
■ It starts with a set of variables for a problem. For example, to derive
the ideal gas law, it started with four variables, p, V, n, T.

‡ p - gas pressure,
‡ V - gas volume,
‡ T - gas temperature,
‡ n - is the number of moles.
■ Values from experimental data are inputted.
■ BACON holds some constant and try to notice trends in the data.
■ Finally draws inferences. Recall pV/nT = k where k is a constant.
■ BACON has also been applied to Kepler's 3rd law, Ohm's law,
conservation of momentum and Joule's law.
51
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
• Example :
Rediscovering the ideal gas law pV/nT = 8.32, where p is the pressure on
a gas, n is the number of moles, T is the temperature and V the volume of
the gas. [The step-by-step complete algorithm is not given like previous
example, but the procedure is explained below]
■ At the first level of description we hold n = 1 and T = 300 and vary p
and V. Choose V to be the dependent variable.
■ At this level, BACON discovers the law pV = 2496.0.
■ Now the program examines this phenomenon :
when n = 1 and T = 310 then pV = 2579.2. Similarly,

when n = 1 and T = 320 then pV = 2662.4.
■ At this point, BACON has enough information to relate the values of pV
and the temperature T. These terms are linearly related with an

intercept of 0, making the ratio pV/T equal to 8.32.
■ Now the discovery system can vary its third independent
term. while n = 2, the pV/T is found to be 16.64,

while n =3, the pV/T is found to be 24.96.
■ When it compares the values of n and pV/T, BACON finds another
linear relation with a zero intercept. The resulting equation, pV/nT =

8.32, is equivalent to the ideal gas law.
52
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
AI –Learning :
6. Clustering Clustering
Clustering is a way to form natural groupings or clusters of patterns.

Clustering is often called an unsupervised learning.
Example : Three natural groups of data points, i.e., 3 natural clusters.

Y
• ••
••• • ••
••• •••
••
■■
■ ■■■
■ ■■
■ Clustering is one of the most utilized data mining techniques.
■ The data have no target attribute.

The data set is explored to find some intrinsic structures in them.
■ Unlike Classification where the task is to learn to assign instances to

predefined classes, in Clustering no predefined classification is required.
The task is to learn a classification from the data.
53
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
6.1 Distance Functions
■ Euclidean geometry is study of relationships between angles and

distances in space. Mathematical spaces may be extended to any
dimension, called an n-dimensional Euclidean space or an n-space.
Let R denote the field of real numbers. The space of all n-tuples of real
numbers forms an n-dimensional vector space over R, denoted by Rn.
An element of Rn is written as X = (x1, x2, …xi…., xn), where xi is a
real number. Similarly the other element Y = (y1, y2, …yi…., yn) .
The vector space operations on Rn are defined

by X + Y = (x1 + y1, X2 + y2, . . , xn + yn)
and aX = (ax1, ax2, . . , axn)
The standard inner product (ie dot product) on Rn, given by

X•Y= ∑n
i=1
(x1 y1 + x2 y2 + . . . . + xn yn) is a real number.
This product defines a distance function (or metric) on Rn by
d(X , Y) = ||X – Y|| =

∑n (xi – yi)2
i=1
The (interior) angle θ between x and y is then given by
θ = cos-1 (
X•Y
||X|| ||Y|| )
The inner product of X with itself is always nonnegative.
∑n
||X || = i=1
(xi - yi)2
54
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
■ Euclidean distance or Euclidean metric is the "ordinary" distance
between two points that one would measure with a ruler. The
Euclidean distance between two points P = (p1, p2, . . pi . . , xn) and Q
= (q1, q2,
. . qi . . , qn) in Euclidean n-space, is defined as :
(p1 – q1)2 + (p2 – q2)2 + . . + (pn – qn)2 =

∑n (pi - qi)2
i=1
Example : 3-dimensional distance

For two 3D points, P = (px , py , . . pz) and Q = (qx , qy , . . qz)
The Euclidean 3-space, is computed as :
(px – qx)2 + (py – qy)2 + (pz – qz)2
■ Manhattan distance also known as city block distance between two
points in an Euclidean space with fixed cartesian coordinate system is

the sum of the lengths of the projections of the line segment between
the points onto the coordinate axes.
Example : In a plane, the Manhattan distance between the point P1
with coordinates (x1, y1) and the point P2 with coordinates (x2 , y2) is
|x1 – x2| + |y1 – y2|
Manhattan versus Euclidean distance:
The red, blue, and yellow lines represent

Manhattan distance. They all are of same
length as 12.
The green line represent Euclidian distance of

length 6×√2 ≈ 8.48.
55
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
■ Minkowski Metric
Let Xi and Xj are data points (vectors) then Minkowski distance
between these two data points is :

dist(Xi, Xj) = ( (xi1 – xj1)h + (xi2 – xj2)h + . . + (xir – xjr)h )1/h
where h is a positive integer.
‡ Euclidean distance IF h = 2
dist(Xi, Xj) = ( (xi1 – xj1)2 + (xi2 – xj2)2 + . . + (xir – xjr)2 )1/2
=( (xi1 – xj1)2 + (xi2 – xj2)2 + . . + (xir – xjr)2 )
Weighted Euclidean distance
dist(Xi, Xj) =(w1(xi1 – xj1) + w2(xi2 – xj2) + . . + wr(xir – xjr)

2 2 2
)
‡ Manhattan distance IF h = 1
dist (Xi, Xj) = |xi1 – xj1| + |xi2 – xj2| + . . + |xir – xjr|
‡ Squared Euclidean distance: to place progressively greater

weight on data points that are further apart.
dist(Xi, Xj) = (xi1 – xj1)2 + (xi2 – xj2)2 + . . + (xir – xjr)2
‡ Chebychev distance: to define two data points as "different" if they

are different on any one of the attributes.
dist(Xi, Xj) = max (|xi1 – xj1| , |xi2 – xj2| , . . , |xir – xjr|)
56
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
6.2 K-Mean Clustering
k-means clustering is an algorithm to classify or to group objects based on

attributes/features into K number of group.
K is positive integer number.
The grouping is done by minimizing the sum of squares of distances

between data and the corresponding cluster centroid.
K-Mean Clustering algorithm
Start The algorithm consists of 3

steps. First take any random
Number of cluster object as initial centroid, then
P
the three steps mentioned
below are iterated until
Centroid converge.
No Object Move to END

group Step-1 Determine centroid
Objects distance from
coordinate
Centroid
Step-2 Determine distance of each
object to the centroids
Grouping based on min
distance Step-3 Group the object based on
minimum distance
The next slide explains step by step the complete algorithm

57
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
Example : K-Mean Clustering

4.5
Objects : 4 medicines as A, B, C, D. 4.0 D◊
3.5
Attributes : 2 as X is weight & Y is PH 3.0 C◊
2.5
Objects Attributes Y
2.0
X Y 1.5
1.0 A◊ B◊
A 1 1 0.5
B 2 1 0
C 4 3 01 23 4 5
D 5 4 X
Initial value of centroids:

Suppose medicine A and medicine B 4.5
be first centroids. If P1
4.0 D ◊
3.5
and P2 denote 3.0 C ◊
coordinates of the centroids, Y 2.5
2.0
then P1= (1, 1) and P2 = (2, 1). 1.5
1.0 A ◊ B◊
0.5
Let centroid P1 be for cluster group-1 0
01 23 4 5
Let centroid P2 be for cluster group-2. X
58
1. Iteraion 0
(a) Objects Clusters centers stated before : Objects : A , B, C, D
Group-1 has center P1 = (1, 1) ; Attributes : X and Y
Group-2 has center P2 = (2, 1) ; A B C D
X 1 2 4 5
Y 1 1 3 4
(b) Calculate distances between cluster center to each object
 1st, calculate the Euclidean distances from cetroid P1 to each point A,
B, C, D. It is the 1st row of the distance matrix.
 2nd, calculate the Euclidean distances from cetroid P2 to each point A,
B, C, D. It is the 2nd row of the distance matrix.
The ways to calculate just two distance matrix elements D13 and D23 are :
D13 = (Cx – P1x)2 + (Cy

– P1y)2 = (4 – 1)2 + (3 – 1)2 = 3.61
D23 = (Cx – P2x) + (Cy

2
– P2y)2 = (4 – 2)2 + (3 – 1)2 = 2.83
Similarly calculate other elements D11 , D12 , D14 , D21 , D22 , D24
(c) Distance matrix becomes
1st row indicates group-1 cluster
2nd row indicates group-2 cluster
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
(d) Objects clustering into groups:

Assign group to each object based on the minimum distance. Thus,
medicine A is assigned to group 1;
medicine B is assigned to group 2,
medicine C is assigned to group 2 , and
medicine D is assigned to group 2.
Group Matrix : matrix element is 1 if the object is assigned to that group
1 0 0 0 1st row as group 1

G0 =
0 1 1 1 2nd row as group 2
A B C
D
59
AI –Learning :
2. Iteration 1 : Clustering
The cluster groups have new members. Compute the new centroids
of
each group. Repeat the process of iteration indicated below.
Group-1 has one member A, the
centroid remains as P1 = (1, 1). 4.5
4.0 D ◊
Group-2 now has 3 members B, 3.5
C, D, so centroid is the average

3.0 C ◊
2.5
Y
2.0
of their coordinates: 1.5
2+4+5 A B
P2 = ( 1+3+5 1.0
◊◊
3 ,
3 ) 0.5
0
= (11/3 , 9/3) 0 1 23 4 5
X
= (3.66, 3)
(a) Objects Clusters centers stated above : Objects : A , B, C, D
Group-1 has center P1 = (1, 1) ; Attributes : X and Y
Group-2 has center P2 = (3.66, 3) ; A B C D
X 1 2 4 5
Y 1 1 3 4
[The method is same as in Iteration 0 (b)]
B, C, D You get D11, D12 , D13 , D14 as the 1st row of the distance
matrix.
B, C, D. You get D21, D22 , D23 , D24 as the 2nd row of the distance
matrix.
0 1 3.61 5 1st row indicates group-1 cluster

1
D =
3.14 2.36 0.47 1.89
Assign group to each object based on the minimum distance.

medicine A no change, remains in group 1;
medicine B moves to group 1,
medicine C no change, remains in group 2 ,
medicine D no change, remains in group 2.
1 1 0 0 1st row indicates group-1 cluster

G1 =
0 0 1 1
A B C
D
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
AI –Learning :
The cluster groups have new members. Compute the new centroids
of
60
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
AI –Learning :
The cluster groups have new members. Compute the new centroids of
Group-1 has 2 members, so the
new centroid is the average 4.5
coordinate among A and B :

4.0 D ◊
3.5
1+2 1+1
P1 = ( , ) = (1.5, 1)
3.0 C ◊
2.5
2 2 Y
2.0
Group-2 has 2 members, so the 1.5
new centroid is the average
1.0 A ◊ B◊
0.5
coordinate among C and D : 0
4+5 3+4 01 23 4 5
P2 = ( , ) = (4.5, 3.5) X
2 2
(a) Objects Clusters centers stated above :

Objects : A , B, C, D
Group-1 has center P1 = (1.5, 1) ;
Attributes : X and Y
Group-2 has center P2 = (4.5, 3.5) ;
A B C D
X 1 2 4 5
Y 1 1 3 4
[The method is same as in Iteration 0 (b) or Iteration 1 (b)]
B, C, D You get D11, D12 , D13 , D14 as the 1st row of the distance
matrix.
B, C, D. You get D21, D22 , D23 , D24 as the 2nd row of the distance
matrix.
0.5 0.5 3.2 4.61 1st row indicates group-1 cluster

D2 =
4.3 3.54 0.71 0.71

Assign group to each object based on the minimum distance.
medicine A no change, remains in group 1;
medicine B no change, remains in group 1;
medicine C no change, remains in group 2 ,
medicine D no change, remains in group 2.
1 1 0 0 1st row indicates group-1 cluster

G2 =
0 0 1 1
A B C D
61
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
AI –Learning : Clustering
4. Finally, the result state that Group Matrix G2 = G1.
This means the grouping of objects in this last iteration and the one
before does not change anymore. Thus, the computation of the k-mean
clustering has reached its stability and no more iteration is needed.
Results of final grouping are :
Objects Feature 1 (X) Feature 2 (Y) Cluster Group

Weight index pH
Medicine A 1 1 1
Medicine B 2 1 1
Medicine C 4 3 2
Medicine A 3 4 2
62
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
AI –Learning by
7. Analogy analogy
Learning by analogy means acquiring new knowledge about an input entity by

transferring it from a known similar entity.
This technique transforms the solutions of problems in one domain to the
solutions of the problems in another domain by discovering analogous states
and operators in the two domains.
Example: Infer by analogy the hydraulics laws that are similar to Kirchoff's laws.
Qa = 3 Qb = 9
I1 I2
I3 = I1 + I2
Qc = ?
Hydraulic Problem Kirchoff's First Law

The other similar examples are :
■ Pressure Drop is like Voltage Drop
■ Hydrogen Atom is like our Solar System :
The Sun has a greater mass than the Earth and attracts it, causing the Earth to
revolve around the Sun. The nucleus also has a greater mass then the electron
and attracts it. Therefore it is plausible that the electron also revolves around the
nucleus.
63
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
AI –Learning - Neural net and Genetic learning
8. Neural net and Genetic
The Neural net, the Genetic learning
Learning
and the Reinforcement learning are
the Biology-inspired AI techniques. In
this section the Neural net and
Genetic learning are briefly described.
8.1 Neural Net (NN)

A neural net is an artificial
representation of the human
brain that tries to simulate its
learning process. An artificial
neural network (ANN) is often
just called a "neural network"
(NN).
■ Neural Networks model a brain

learning by example.
■ Neural networks are structures

"trained" to recognize input
patterns.
■ Neural networks typically take
a vector of input values and

produce a vector of output
values; inside, they train
weights of "neurons".
■ A Perceptron is a model of a
single `trainable' neuron.
64
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
AI –Learning - Neural net
■ Perceptron is a model of a single `trainable' neuron.
X1
w1
X2 w2
w3
X3 T Y
●
wn
●
Xn
‡ Inputs are x1, x2, . . . , xn as real numbers or

boolean values depending on the problem.
‡ w1, w2, . . . , wn are weights of the edges and are real valued.
‡ T is the threshold and is real valued.
‡ Y is the output and is boolean.
■ If the net input which is (w1 x1 + w2 x2 + ... + wn xn) is greater than
the threshold T then output Y is 1 else 0.
■ Neural network uses supervised learning, in which inputs and outputs
are known and the goal is to build a representation of a function that

will approximate the input to output mapping.
65
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
AI –Learning - Genetic
8.2 Genetic Learning learning
Genetic algorithms (GAs) are part of evolutionary

computing. GA is a rapidly growing area of AI.
■ Genetic algorithms are implemented as a computer simulation,
where techniques are inspired by evolutionary biology.
■ Mechanics of biological evolution:
‡ Every organism has a set of rules, describing how that organism is

built, and encoded in the genes of an organism.
‡ The genes are connected together into long strings called
chromosomes.
‡ Each gene represents a specific trait (feature) of the organism and

has several different settings, e.g. setting for a hair color gene
may be black or brown.
‡ The genes and their settings are referred as an organism's
genotype.
‡ When two organisms mate they share their genes. The resultant
offspring may end up having half the genes from one parent and
half from the other. This process is called cross over.
‡ A gene may be mutated and expressed in the organism as a
completely new trait.
■ Thus, Genetic Algorithms are a way of solving problems by mimicking
processes the nature uses ie Selection, Crosses over, Mutation and

Accepting to evolve a solution to a problem.
66
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
■ Genetic Algorithm steps
(1) [Start] Generate random population of n chromosomes (Encode
suitable solutions for the problem)

(2) [Fitness] Evaluate the fitness f(x) of each chromosome x in the
population.
(3) [New population] Create a new population by repeating following
steps until the new population is complete.

(a) [Selection] Select two parent chromosomes from a population
according to their fitness.

(b) [Crossover] With a crossover probability, cross over the parents
to form new offspring (children). If no crossover is performed,

the offspring would be the exact copy of parents.
(c) [Mutation] With a mutation probability, mutate the new
offspring at each locus (position in chromosome).
(d) [Accepting] Place new offspring in the new population.
(4) [Replace] Use new generated population for a further run of the
algorithm.
(5) [Test] If the end condition is satisfied, stop, and return the best
solution in the current population.

(6) [Loop] Go to step 2.
■ Genetic Algorithms does unsupervised learning - the right answer is
not known beforehand.

67
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
AI –Learning - Reinforcement
9. Reinforcement Learning learning
Reinforcement learning refers to a class of problems in machine learning which

postulate an agent exploring an environment.
 The agent perceives its current state and takes actions.
 The environment, in return, provides a reward positive or negative.
 The algorithms attempt to find a policy for maximizing cumulative reward
for the agent over the course of the problem.
In other words, the definition of Reinforcement learning is :

" A computational approach to learning whereby an agent tries to maximize the
total amount of reward it receives when interacting with a complex, uncertain
environment."
Reinforcement learning is “a way of programming agents by reward and

punishment without needing to specify how the task is to be achieved”.
[Kaelbling, Littman, & Moore, 96]
The RL Problem and the tasks are illustrated in the next few slides.
68
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
9.1 Reinforcement Learning (RL) Problem

Reinforcement Learning is a computational approach to understanding
and automating goal-directed learning and decision-making.
• Agent - Environment interaction
RL emphasizes learning from interaction with its environment.
 RL uses a formal framework defining the interaction between a learning agent
and its environment in terms of states, actions, and rewards.
 The state-action pairs form value functions that does efficient search in
the space of policies guided by evaluations of all policies.
Agent - Environment interaction in Reinforcement learning
Agent
state st reward rt
action at
rt + 1
Environment
st + 1
‡ The agent and environment interact in a sequence of discrete time
steps, t = 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, - - -
‡ At each discrete time t, the agent (learning system) observes state
st ∈ S and chooses action at ∈ A
‡ Then agent receives an immediate numerical reward rt+1 ∈  and

the state changes to st+1
‡ At each time step, the agent implements a mapping from states to
probabilities of selecting each possible action.

‡ This mapping is called the agent's policy t ,
where t(s,a) is the probability at at = a if st ∈ S.
‡ RL methods specify how the agent changes its policy as a result of
its experience.
‡ The agent's goal, is to maximize the total amount of reward it
receives over the long run.

69
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
• Key Features of RL
■ The learner is not told what actions to take, instead it find finds out
what to do by trial-and-error search.
■ The environment is stochastic; ie., the behavior is non-deterministic
means a "state" does not fully determine its next "state".
■ The reward may be delayed, so the learner may need to sacrifice
short- term gains for greater long-term gains.
■ The learner has to balance between the need to explore its
environment and the need to exploit its current knowledge.

70
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
9.2 Reinforcement Learning tasks
Most RL research is conducted within the mathematical framework of

Markov decision processes (MDPs).
 The MDPs involve a decision-making agent interacting with its
environment so as to maximize the cumulative reward it
receives over time.
 The agent perceives aspects of the environment's state and
selects actions.
 The agent may estimate a value function and use it to construct
better and better decision-making policies over time.
Thus the elements of Reinforcement Learning are
‡ Markov Decision Process
‡ Policy
‡ Agent’s Learning Task
‡ Reward
‡ Value Functions
Each of these elements are explained in the next few slides. However, first
the Stochastic process, Markov chain, and few notations are explained.
71
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
• Recall : Stochastic processes, Markov chain , and the notations.
■ Stochastic processes
A physical stochastic processes is a sequences of events or path
governed by probabilistic laws.
A stochastic process X = { X(t), t ∈ T } is a collection of random
variables. For each t in the index set T, the X(t) is a random
variable. The t is often interpreted as time and X(t) the state of
the process at time t.
If the index set T is a countable set,
then we have a discrete-time stochastic process;
Else if T is a non-countable continuous set,
then we have a continuous-time stochastic process.
Any realization of X is named a sample path, which can be
discrete or continuous.
■ Markov chain
A Markov chain, is a stochastic process with the Markov property.
Markov property means, given the present state, the future states
are independent of the past states; means the future states depends
only on its present state, and not on any past states.
In other words, the description of the present state fully captures all
the information that could influence the future evolution of the
process. Future states will be reached through a probabilistic process
instead of a deterministic one.
At each step the system may change its state from the current
state to another state, or remain in the same state, according to a
certain probability distribution. The changes in state are called
transitions, and the probabilities associated with various state-changes
are called transition probabilities.
72
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
■ Notations followed
t discrete time step

T final time step of an episode
st state perceived by agent at time t
at action selected by agent at time t
rt+1 reward received by agent at time t
st+1 resulting next state perceived by agent at time t
rt+1 rt+2 rt+3

st st+1 st+2 st+3
at at+1 at+2 at+3
Rt return (cumulative discounted reward) following
t tR (n)
n - step return
Rt  - return
 policy, decision-making rule

 (s) action taken in state s under deterministic policy 
 (s,a) probability of taking action a in state s under stochastic policy 
S set of all non-terminal states

S+ set of all states, including the terminal state
A(s) set of actions possible in state s
pa ss′ probability of transition from state s to state s’ under action a
rass′ expected immediate reward on transition from state s to state

s’ under action a
73
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
• Markov System
A system that can be in one of several specified states with a specified

time step, and at each step the system will randomly change states
or remain where it is according to some fix probability. The probability
of going from State i to State j is a fix number pij, called the
transition probability.
Example : Laundry Detergent Switching
A market analyst for Detergents is interested to know whether consumers

prefer powdered detergents or liquid detergents.
Two market surveys taken 1 year apart revealed that :
 20% of all powdered detergent users had switched to liquid 1 year
later, while the rest were using powder.

 10% of liquid detergent users had switched to powder 1 year later,
with the rest using liquid.
Analysis of the survey

1. Every year a consumer may be in one of two possible states:
State 1, he is a powdered detergent user;

State 2, he is a liquid detergent user.
2. There is a basic time step of 1 year;
3. If a consumer during a given year is in State 1, a powdered detergent
user, then the probability that he will be in State 2, a liquid detergent

user, in the next year is 20% = 0.2 denoted by p12 = 0.2 .
Therefore probability for him to remain in State 1 is thus ( 1- 0.2 = 0.8),
denoted by p11 = 0.8.
4. If a consumer during a given year is in State 2, a liquid detergent
user, then the probability that he will be in State 1, a powered

detergent user, in the next year is 10% = 0.1 denoted by p21 = 0.1.
Therefore probability for him to remain in State 2 is thus (1 - 0.1 =
0.9), denoted by p22 = 0.9.
The state transition diagram is shown in the next slide.

74
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
[Continued from previous slide - Example : Laundry Detergent Switching]
We can draw a state transition diagram or use a matrix to represent

these probabilities called transition probabilities.
0.2 0.8 0.2

0.8 1 2 0.9 P=
0.1 0.9 0.1
State transition diagram State transition matrix
The Figure 1 and 2 : the numbers are transition probabilities, from

State i to State j , a number pij, and the arrows show the switching
directions.
75
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
■ Markov State Transition

State transition probabilities mentioned before are explained here.
Transition probability :
If a Markov system is in state i, there is a fixed probability pij of it
going into state j in the next time step. The probability pij is called
a transition probability.
Transition diagram :
A Markov system is illustrated by a state transition diagram, that
shows all the states and transition probabilities.
Example : Transition Diagram (Missing arrows indicate zero probability.)
0.8
0.2 1 2
0.4
0.6
0.5 0.3
0.1
■ Transition matrix :
The matrix P whose ijth entry is pij is called transition matrix
associated with the system. The entries in each row add up to 1.
Example :
A 2 x 2 transition matrix P
To
1 2
1 P11 P12 Arrows originating in state 1
From
2 P21 P22 Arrows originating in state 2
The 3x3 Matrix corresponding to Transition Diagram

To
1 2 3
1 0.2 0.8 0
2 0.4 0 0.6
From
3 0.5 0.35 0.15
76
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
• Markov Decision Processes (MDPs)

Markov decision processes (MDPs), provide a mathematical framework
for modeling decision-making in situations where outcomes are partly
random and partly under the control of the decision maker.
Description :
 MDP is a discrete time stochastic control process characterized by a
set of states;
 In each state there are several actions from which the decision maker
must choose. For a state s and an action a, a state transition function

Pa(s) determines the transition probabilities to next state.
 The decision maker earns a reward r for each state transition. The
state transitions possess the Markov property, ie., given the state of
the MDP at time t, the transition probabilities to the state at time t+1
are independent of all previous states or actions.
 MDPs are an extension of Markov chains. The differences are the
addition of actions (allowing choice) and the rewards (giving

motivation). If there are only one action, or if the action to take were
fixed for each state, a Markov decision process would reduce to a
rt+1 rt+2 rt+3

st st+3
at st+1 st+2
at+3
at+1 at+2
Markov chain.
State transitions, Actions and Rewards
‡ Set of states S
‡ Set of actions A(s) available in each state S
‡ Markov assumption: st+1 and rt+1 depend only on st , at and not

on anything that happened before t
‡ Rewards: on transition from state S to state S’ under action a
rass′ = E rt+1 | st = s, at = a, st+1 = s′

‡ Transition probabilities : from state S to state S’ under action a
pa ss′ = P ( st+1 = s′ |s t= s, a =t a′ )
77
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
• Agent’s Learning Task

Agent execute actions in the environment.
Observe results, and learn policy which is a strategy (a way of behaving).
 : S × A → [0, 1] with (s, a) = P(at = a |st = s)
If the policy is deterministic, then write more simply as
 : S → A with  (s) = a
giving the action chosen in the state S.
• Policy
It defines the learning agent's way of behaving at a given time.
A mapping from states to actions (deterministic policy), or the distributions
over actions (stochastic policy).
■ It is a mapping from perceived states of the environment to actions
to be taken in those states.

■ It in some cases may be a simple function or lookup table;
it may involve extensive computation like a search process.

■ It is the core of a reinforcement learning agent;
it alone is sufficient to determine behavior.

■ In general it may be stochastic (random).
78
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
• Reward Function
The function defines the goal in a reinforcement learning problem.
■ Maps each perceived state (or state-action pair) of the environment
to a single number, indicating intrinsic desirability of that state.
■ Indicates what is good in an immediate sense.
■ Tells what are the good and bad events for the agent;
Example : a biological system identify rewards high with pleasure

and low with pain
■ RL agent's sole objective is to maximize the total reward it receives
in the long run.
■ Rewards servers a basis for altering the policy;
Example : an action selected by the policy if followed by low

reward, then the policy may be changed to select some other action
in that situation.
■ In general, the reward function may be stochastic.

79
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
• Maximize Reward
Agent's goal is to maximize reward it receives in long run. "Agent–
Environment" interaction is generally a sequence of episodes.
If the interaction result into a sequence of separate episodes, it is known
as episodic tasks. If the interaction does not break into identifiable
episodes, but continue without limit is called continuing tasks.
■ If Episodic task then the simplest return Rt is sum of rewards

Rt = rt+1 + rt+2 + · · · + rT ,
where T is the time when a terminal state is reached.
■ If Continuing tasks then the discounted return Rt

∞
Rt = rt+1 + rt+2 + 2 rt+3 + · · · = ∑Уt+k-1 rt+k ,
K=1
where parameter У is discount factor, 0 ≤ У ≤ 1.
■ If Average-reward tasks then return Rt
Rt = limt (1/T) (rt+1 + rt+2 + · · · + rT)

T ∞
• Value Functions
The value of state s under policy  is the expected return when starting from
s and choosing actions according to  :
′
V ∞
(s) = E { Rt | st = s } = E {∑У t+k-1 rt+k| st = s }
K=1
 K=1
80
RC Chakraborty,
www.myreaders.info
AI –Learning -
10. References : Textbooks References
1. "Artificial Intelligence", by Elaine Rich and Kevin Knight, (2006), McGraw Hill
companies Inc., Chapter 17, page 447-484.
2. "Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach" by Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig,

(2002), Prentice Hall, Chapter 18-21, page 649-788.
3. "Computational Intelligence: A Logical Approach", by David Poole, Alan

Mackworth, and Randy Goebel, (1998), Oxford University Press, Chapter 11,
page 397-438.
4. "Artificial Intelligence: Structures and Strategies for Complex Problem Solving",

by George F. Luger, (2002), Addison-Wesley, Chapter 10- 13, page 385-570.
5. "AI: A New Synthesis", by Nils J. Nilsson, (1998), Morgan Kaufmann Inc.,

Chapter 10, Page 163-178.
6. "Artificial Intelligence: Theory and Practice", by Thomas Dean,

(1994), Addison-Wesley, Chapter 5, Page 179-254
7. Related documents from open source, mainly internet. An exhaustive list is

being prepared for inclusion at a later date.
81

06 Learning Systems

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

06 Learning Systems

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

06 Learning Systems

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

RC Chakraborty,

Learning Systems : AI Course Lecture 31 – 34, notes, slides

Learning systems, topics : Definition, learning agents, components

Learning by memorization, Learning something by repeating.

3. Learning from Example : Induction

8. Neural net and Genetic Learning

What is learning ? Some Quotations

• Herbert Simon, 1983

• Marvin Minsky, 1986

• Ryszard Michalski, 1986

Learning denotes changes in a system that enable the system to do the

A computer program is said to learn from experience E with respect to

Why do you require Machine Learning ?

■ Understand and improve efficiency of human learning.

■ Discover new things or structure that is unknown to humans.

■ Fill in skeletal or incomplete specifications about a domain.

1.2 Learning Agents

An agent is an entity that is capable of perceiving and do action.

Environment Sensors Actuators

Robotic agent Cameras, IR range finders motors

Software agent Key stroke, File contents Displays to screen,

In computer science an agent is a software agent that assists users

• Intelligent Agent (Learning Agent)

Percept : agent's perceptual inputs

Percept sequence : history of everything the agent has

perceived Agent function : describes agent’s behavior

Agent program : Implements agent's function

Learning Agent consist of four main components :

Components of a Learning System

The components are described in the next slide.

• Components of a Learning System

■ Performance Element: The Performance Element is the agent itself that

acts in the world. It takes in percepts and decides on external actions.

knowledge about performance element and some feedback,

failure) by comparing with a fixed standard of performance.

new examples or experiences that will aid in training the system

1.2 Paradigms of Machine Learning

■ Rote Learning: Learning by memorization; One-to-one mapping from

inputs to stored representation; Association-based storage and

■ Induction: Learning from examples; A form of supervised learning,

uses specific examples to reach general conclusions; Concepts are

■ Clustering: Discovering similar group; Unsupervised, Inductive

■ Analogy: Determine correspondence between two different

■ Discovery: Learning without the help from a teacher; Learning is

■ Genetic Algorithms: Inspired by natural evolution; In the natural

■ Reinforcement: Learning from feedback (+ve or -ve reward) given

Rote learning technique avoids understanding the inner complexities but

• Learning by Memorization which avoids understanding the inner

• Learning something by Repeating over and over and over again;

A process of learning by example. The system tries to induce a general rule

• Winston's Learning program

3.1 Winston's Learning

Winston (1975) described a Blocks World Learning program. This

Example : Concepts such a "house".

■ Start with input, a line drawing of a blocks world

placed on top of it, tent – as 2 wedges touching side by side, or an

miss is an object that is not an instance of the concept but a very

■ The program uses procedures to analyze the drawing and construct a

semantic net representation.