FOIDL


FOIDL is an ILP system for learning first-order decision lists (ordered lists of clauses each ending in a cut). It has been used to obtain the current best results on learning the past-tense of English.

Both Common Lisp and Prolog code for FOIDL is available via anonymous ftp. See the README files here for details. Pointers to papers on FOIDL can be found on our ILP research page. Below is the standard reference (click on the open book image).

  • Induction of First-Order Decision Lists: Results on Learning the Past Tense of English Verbs
     Raymond J. Mooney and Mary Elaine Califf
    Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, 3 (1995) pp. 1-24.
    This paper presents a method for inducing logic programs from examples that learns a new class of concepts called first-order decision lists, defined as ordered lists of clauses each ending in a cut. The method, called FOIDL, is based on FOIL but employs intensional background knowledge and avoids the need for explicit negative examples. It is particularly useful for problems that involve rules with specific exceptions, such as learning the past-tense of English verbs, a task widely studied in the context of the symbolic/connectionist debate. FOIDL is able to learn concise, accurate programs for this problem from significantly fewer examples than previous methods (both connectionist and symbolic).

    estlin@cs.utexas.edu