While basic predictive maintenance concepts are discussed in various articles, there is actually little to find when it comes to selecting the best approach on predicting an error. In this article we get you started with a short introduction on predictive maintenance and then focus on which way to go when it comes to choosing the best predictive algorithm for you: Is it better to go with a machine learning model or should you get started with a rule based algorithm first? Let's get started by understanding where we are coming from and what it is all about, we need some context: Predictive Maintenance is basically as old as it gets and in its foundation nothing new. If in the past a mechanics was servicing a machine and found unusual visual or acoustic behaviour in a certain part, the machine may be shut down before breaking and the part was exchanged. That is already predictive maintenance.

Rule-based models, e.g., decision trees, are widely used in scenarios demanding high model interpretability for their transparent inner structures and good model expressivity. However, rule-based models are hard to optimize, especially on large data sets, due to their discrete parameters and structures. Ensemble methods and fuzzy/soft rules are commonly used to improve performance, but they sacrifice the model interpretability. To obtain both good scalability and interpretability, we propose a new classifier, named Rule-based Representation Learner (RRL), that automatically learns interpretable non-fuzzy rules for data representation and classification. To train the non-differentiable RRL effectively, we project it to a continuous space and propose a novel training method, called Gradient Grafting, that can directly optimize the discrete model using gradient descent. An improved design of logical activation functions is also devised to increase the scalability of RRL and enable it to discretize the continuous features end-to-end. Exhaustive experiments on nine small and four large data sets show that RRL outperforms the competitive interpretable approaches and can be easily adjusted to obtain a trade-off between classification accuracy and model complexity for different scenarios. Our code is available at: https://github.com/12wang3/rrl.

As organizations look to modernize and optimize processes, machine learning (ML) is an increasingly powerful tool to drive automation. Unlike basic, rule-based automation--which is typically used for standardized, predictable processes--ML can handle more complex processes and learn over time, leading to greater improvements in accuracy and efficiency. But a lot of companies are stuck in the pilot stage; they may have developed a few discrete use cases, but they struggle to apply ML more broadly or take advantage of its most advanced forms. A recent McKinsey Global Survey, for example, found that only about 15 percent of respondents have successfully scaled automation across multiple parts of the business. And only 36 percent of respondents said that ML algorithms had been deployed beyond the pilot stage.

In this paper we present the first safe system for full control of self-driving vehicles trained from human demonstrations and deployed in challenging, real-world, urban environments. Current industry-standard solutions use rule-based systems for planning. Although they perform reasonably well in common scenarios, the engineering complexity renders this approach incompatible with human-level performance. On the other hand, the performance of machine-learned (ML) planning solutions can be improved by simply adding more exemplar data. However, ML methods cannot offer safety guarantees and sometimes behave unpredictably. To combat this, our approach uses a simple yet effective rule-based fallback layer that performs sanity checks on an ML planner's decisions (e.g. avoiding collision, assuring physical feasibility). This allows us to leverage ML to handle complex situations while still assuring the safety, reducing ML planner-only collisions by 95%. We train our ML planner on 300 hours of expert driving demonstrations using imitation learning and deploy it along with the fallback layer in downtown San Francisco, where it takes complete control of a real vehicle and navigates a wide variety of challenging urban driving scenarios.

Incorporating explicit domain knowledge into neural-based task-oriented dialogue systems is an effective way to reduce the need of large sets of annotated dialogues. In this paper, we investigate how the use of explicit domain knowledge of conversational designers affects the performance of neural-based dialogue systems. To support this investigation, we propose the Conversational-Logic-Injection-in-Neural-Network system (CLINN) where explicit knowledge is coded in semi-logical rules. By using CLINN, we evaluated semi-logical rules produced by a team of differently skilled conversational designers. We experimented with the Restaurant topic of the MultiWOZ dataset. Results show that external knowledge is extremely important for reducing the need of annotated examples for conversational systems. In fact, rules from conversational designers used in CLINN significantly outperform a state-of-the-art neural-based dialogue system.

In this article, you will discover the FP Growth algorithm. It is one of the state-of-the-art algorithms for frequent itemset mining (also called Association Rule Mining) and basket analysis. Let's start with an introduction to Frequent Itemset Mining and Basket Analysis. Basket Analysis is the study of baskets in shopping. This can be online or offline shopping, as long as you can obtain data that tracks the products for each transaction.

While pre-trained language models (PLMs) are the go-to solution to tackle many natural language processing problems, they are still very limited in their ability to capture and to use common-sense knowledge. In fact, even if information is available in the form of approximate (soft) logical rules, it is not clear how to transfer it to a PLM in order to improve its performance for deductive reasoning tasks. Here, we aim to bridge this gap by teaching PLMs how to reason with soft Horn rules. We introduce a classification task where, given facts and soft rules, the PLM should return a prediction with a probability for a given hypothesis. We release the first dataset for this task, and we propose a revised loss function that enables the PLM to learn how to predict precise probabilities for the task. Our evaluation results show that the resulting fine-tuned models achieve very high performance, even on logical rules that were unseen at training. Moreover, we demonstrate that logical notions expressed by the rules are transferred to the fine-tuned model, yielding state-of-the-art results on external datasets.

In this paper, we investigate finite representations of DatalogMTL. First, we introduce programs that have finite models and propose a toolkit for structuring the execution of DatalogMTL rules into sequential phases. Then, we study infinite models that eventually become constant and introduce sufficient criteria for programs that allow for such representation. We proceed by considering infinite models that are eventually periodic and show that such a representation encompasses all DatalogMTLFP programs, a widely discussed fragment. Finally, we provide a novel algorithm for reasoning over finite representable DatalogMTL programs that incorporates all of the previously discussed representations.

Rule sets are often used in Machine Learning (ML) as a way to communicate the model logic in settings where transparency and intelligibility are necessary. Rule sets are typically presented as a text-based list of logical statements (rules). Surprisingly, to date there has been limited work on exploring visual alternatives for presenting rules. In this paper, we explore the idea of designing alternative representations of rules, focusing on a number of visual factors we believe have a positive impact on rule readability and understanding. We then presents a user study exploring their impact. The results show that some design factors have a strong impact on how efficiently readers can process the rules while having minimal impact on accuracy. This work can help practitioners employ more effective solutions when using rules as a communication strategy to understand ML models.

As a charity says thousands of tenants fell into debt during the pandemic, one woman tells us about her constant fear of eviction. StepChange says 10% of private renters have fallen into arrears, owing nearly £800 each on average, and is calling for emergency support as the furlough scheme and Universal Credit uplift end. The government says unprecedented action has helped keep people in their homes and it's right for measures to be lifted as the economy reopens.