Page i

A Compendium of Machine Learning:

Volume 1

Symbolic Machine Learning

 Page ii

ABLEX SERIES IN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Yorick Wilks, Series Editor

Chess and Machine Intuition, by George W. Atkinson

The Turing Test and the Frame Problem: AI's Mistaken Understanding of
Intelligence, by Larry J. Crockett

A Connectionist Language Generator, by Nigel Ward

A Compendium of Machine Learning, Vol. 1: Symbolic Machine Learning,

by Garry Briscoe and Terry Caelli

in preparation

Computer Language and Vision Across the Pacific, by Yorick Wilks

Declarative Semantics of Logic Programming, by Michael Gelfond and

Vladimir Lifschitz
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A Compendium of Machine Learning:

Volume 1

Symbolic Machine Learning

Garry Briscoe
Terry Caelli

School of Computing
Curtin University of Technology
Perth
Western Australia
 Page iv

Copyright © 1996 by Ablex Publishing Corporation

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming,
recording or otherwise, without permission of the publisher.

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Briscoe, Garry
A compendium of machine learning / Garry Briscoe, Terry Caelli.
p. cm. — (Ablex series in artificial intelligence)
Includes bibliographical and index.
Contents: v. 1. Symbolic machine learning.
ISBN 1-56750-178-8 (cloth : alk. paper). —ISBN 1-56750-179-6
(pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Machine learning—Technique. 2. Algorithms. 3. Learning
models (Stochastic processes) I. Caelli, Terry. II. Title.
III. Series.
Q325.5.B74 1996
006.3'1—dc20 96-2534
CIP

Ablex Publishing Corporation

355 Chestnut Street
Norwood, New Jersey 07648
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CONTENTS

I
Introduction
1

1
Definitions, Paradigms, Taxonomies

1.1 What Is Machine Learning?

1.2 Paradigms

1.3 Taxonomies

1.4 Representation of Acquired Concepts

1.5 Background Knowledge

10

1.6 Comparison of Techniques

 11

1.7 Knowledge-Level vs. Symbol-Level

11

1.8 Theoretical and Empirical Evaluation

13

II
Symbolic Empirical Learning

15

2
Introduction to SEL

17

3
Learning from Examples

21

3.1 Description Languages

21

3.2 Learning As Search

23

3.3 Single vs. Multiple-concept Learning

24
3.4 Incremental vs. Batch Learning

24

3.5 The Importance of Inductive Bias

25

3.6 The Single Representation Trick

25

3.7 The Need for Constructive Induction

25

3.8 The Problem of Noisy Data

27

3.9 Source of Instances

28

3.10 Psychological Evidence

28