Decision making in real-life scenarios may often be modeled as an optimization problem. It requires the consideration of various attributes like human preferences and thinking, which constrain achieving the optimal value of the problem objectives. The value of the objectives may be maximized or minimized, depending on the situation. Numerous times, the values of these problem parameters are in linguistic form, as human beings naturally understand and express themselves using words. These problems are therefore termed as linguistic optimization problems (LOPs), and are of two types, namely single objective linguistic optimization problems (SOLOPs) and multi-objective linguistic optimization problems (MOLOPs). In these LOPs, the value of the objective function(s) may not be known at all points of the decision space, and therefore, the objective function(s) as well as problem constraints are linked by the if-then rules. Tsukamoto inference method has been used to solve these LOPs; however, it suffers from drawbacks. As, the use of linguistic information inevitably calls for the utilization of computing with words (CWW), and therefore, 2-tuple linguistic model based solution methodologies were proposed for LOPs. However, we found that 2-tuple linguistic model based solution methodologies represent the semantics of the linguistic information using a combination of type-1 fuzzy sets and ordinal term sets. As, the semantics of linguistic information are best modeled using the interval type-2 fuzzy sets, hence we propose solution methodologies for LOPs based on CWW approach of perceptual computing, in this paper. The perceptual computing based solution methodologies use a novel design of CWW engine, called the perceptual reasoning (PR). PR in the current form is suitable for solving SOLOPs and, hence, we have also extended it to the MOLOPs.

This book explains and explores the principal techniques of Data Mining, the automatic extraction of implicit and potentially useful information from data, which is increasingly used in commercial, scientific and other application areas. It focuses on classification, association rule mining and clustering. Each topic is clearly explained, with a focus on algorithms not mathematical formalism, and is illustrated by detailed worked examples. The book is written for readers without a strong background in mathematics or statistics and any formulae used are explained in detail. It can be used as a textbook to support courses at undergraduate or postgraduate levels in a wide range of subjects including Computer Science, Business Studies, Marketing, Artificial Intelligence, Bioinformatics and Forensic Science.

Human vision is able to compensate imperfections in sensory inputs from the real world by reasoning based on prior knowledge about the world. Machine learning has had a significant impact on computer vision due to its inherent ability in handling imprecision, but the absence of a reasoning framework based on domain knowledge limits its ability to interpret complex scenarios. We propose semi-lexical languages as a formal basis for dealing with imperfect tokens provided by the real world. The power of machine learning is used to map the imperfect tokens into the alphabet of the language and symbolic reasoning is used to determine the membership of input in the language. Semi-lexical languages also have bindings that prevent the variations in which a semi-lexical token is interpreted in different parts of the input, thereby leaning on deduction to enhance the quality of recognition of individual tokens. We present case studies that demonstrate the advantage of using such a framework over pure machine learning and pure symbolic methods.

A major goal of machine learning is to create techniques that abstract away irrelevant information. The generalisation property of standard Learning Classifier System (LCS) removes such information at the feature level but not at the feature interaction level. Code Fragments (CFs), a form of tree-based programs, introduced feature manipulation to discover important interactions, but they often contain irrelevant information, which causes structural inefficiency. XOF is a recently introduced LCS that uses CFs to encode building blocks of knowledge about feature interaction. This paper aims to optimise the structural efficiency of CFs in XOF. We propose two measures to improve constructing CFs to achieve this goal. Firstly, a new CF-fitness update estimates the applicability of CFs that also considers the structural complexity. The second measure we can use is a niche-based method of generating CFs. These approaches were tested on Even-parity and Hierarchical problems, which require highly complex combinations of input features to capture the data patterns. The results show that the proposed methods significantly increase the structural efficiency of CFs, which is estimated by the rule "generality rate". This results in faster learning performance in the Hierarchical Majority-on problem. Furthermore, a user-set depth limit for CF generation is not needed as the learning agent will not adopt higher-level CFs once optimal CFs are constructed.

Existential rules are a positive fragment of first-order logic that generalizes function-free Horn rules by allowing existentially quantified variables in rule heads. This family of languages has recently attracted significant interest in the context of ontology-mediated query answering. Forward chaining, also known as the chase, is a fundamental tool for computing universal models of knowledge bases, which consist of existential rules and facts. Several chase variants have been defined, which differ on the way they handle redundancies. A set of existential rules is bounded if it ensures the existence of a bound on the depth of the chase, independently from any set of facts. Deciding if a set of rules is bounded is an undecidable problem for all chase variants. Nevertheless, when computing universal models, knowing that a set of rules is bounded for some chase variant does not help much in practice if the bound remains unknown or even very large. Hence, we investigate the decidability of the k-boundedness problem, which asks whether the depth of the chase for a given set of rules is bounded by an integer k. We identify a general property which, when satisfied by a chase variant, leads to the decidability of k-boundedness. We then show that the main chase variants satisfy this property, namely the oblivious, semi-oblivious (aka Skolem), and restricted chase, as well as their breadth-first versions. This paper is under consideration for publication in Theory and Practice of Logic Programming.

Have you ever wondered how your personal assistant (e.g: Siri) is built? Do you want to build your own? Let's talk about Natural Language Processing. NLP is an interdisciplinary field concerned with the interactions between computers and human natural languages (e.g: English) -- speech or text. Okay, now we get it, NLP plays a major role in our daily computer interactions, let's see more business-related NLP use-cases: NLP is divided into two fields: Linguistics and Computer Science.

By John Spooner, Head of Artificial Intelligence, EMEA, H2O.ai Artificial Intelligence (AI) has evolved significantly from being a mere technology buzzword, to the commercial reality it is today. The technology is making a positive impact across many industries, including the financial sector. The financial services industry has a reputation of constantly innovating and advancing new technologies, in the pursuit of strengthening the customer base, and finding new revenue opportunities. This is happening across all segments including capital markets, commercial banking, consumer finance and insurance. The use of AI in the financial services is rapidly changing the business landscape, even in traditionally conservative areas.

Most of todays work on knowledge graph completion is concerned with sub-symbolic approaches that focus on the concept of embedding a given graph in a low dimensional vector space. Against this trend, we propose an approach called AnyBURL that is rooted in the symbolic space. Its core algorithm is based on sampling paths, which are generalized into Horn rules. Previously published results show that the prediction quality of AnyBURL is on the same level as current state of the art with the additional benefit of offering an explanation for the predicted fact. In this paper, we are concerned with two extensions of AnyBURL. Firstly, we change AnyBURLs interpretation of rules from $\Theta$-subsumption into $\Theta$-subsumption under Object Identity. Secondly, we introduce reinforcement learning to better guide the sampling process. We found out that reinforcement learning helps finding more valuable rules earlier in the search process. We measure the impact of both extensions and compare the resulting approach with current state of the art approaches. Our results show that AnyBURL outperforms most sub-symbolic methods.

Here, we propose an unsupervised fuzzy rule-based dimensionality reduction method primarily for data visualization. It considers the following important issues relevant to dimensionality reduction-based data visualization: (i) preservation of neighborhood relationships, (ii) handling data on a non-linear manifold, (iii) the capability of predicting projections for new test data points, (iv) interpretability of the system, and (v) the ability to reject test points if required. For this, we use a first-order Takagi-Sugeno type model. We generate rule antecedents using clusters in the input data. In this context, we also propose a new variant of the Geodesic c-means clustering algorithm. We estimate the rule parameters by minimizing an error function that preserves the inter-point geodesic distances (distances over the manifold) as Euclidean distances on the projected space. We apply the proposed method on three synthetic and three real-world data sets and visually compare the results with four other standard data visualization methods. The obtained results show that the proposed method behaves desirably and performs better than or comparable to the methods compared with. The proposed method is found to be robust to the initial conditions. The predictability of the proposed method for test points is validated by experiments. We also assess the ability of our method to reject output points when it should. Then, we extend this concept to provide a general framework for learning an unsupervised fuzzy model for data projection with different objective functions. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to manifold learning using unsupervised fuzzy modeling.

Machine Learning is on everyone's lips these days. But how can it help secure an online business from fraud? Talking to a number of fraud prevention professionals, we've noticed that many of them are looking for a more advanced, Machine Learning based solutions to address cybercrime issue. But how do these solutions really work? In this whitepaper, we'll explain what's behind the so-called "black box", show the actual ML process in fraud prevention, and compare the benefits of using ML and rule-based systems.