1 Overview
In this assignment, you will explore an advanced topic in Knowledge Representation
not covered in class. You will demonstrate the broad knowledge you acquired in class
by exploring a specific domain in more depth. You will read on a particular technique
and application of Knowledge Representation, as reported in recent publications.
After obtaining a solid understanding of the application, you will prepare a
presentation slides which might be conducted in class or to me. This will be followed
by a discussion. Finally, you will submit a report summarizing your reading. Your
presentation and report must not only be a passive description of existing work, but
rather a critical view of this work and some of the issues and problems surrounding
it. It would also be good to present technical descriptions and originality of the ideas,
together with definitions and examples, as opposed to just an essay. The report must
be written in the form of a research paper.
2 Suggested Topics
This year, we will explore topics related to knowledge representation. Below you will
find suggested list of topics, together with a reference to the main research papers for
each topic. On Blackboard, you can find the papers themselves. Notice that this is
just used as a start.
Solving the semantic logic puzzles [1]•
Logical semantics via f-structure mapping [2]•
Converting phrase structure trees into semantico-grammatical representation•
[3].
Lexical Functional Grammar constraints and concurrent constraint•
programming [4]
Propositional Glue and the Projection Architecture of LFG [5]•
λ-Grammars and the Syntax-Semantics Interface [6]•
Grammatical vs. Lexical Constructors for Glue Semantics [7]•
Ontologies and the Semantic Web [8]•
Automated reasoning and Robotics [9]•
Proposed Topic: You could also propose your own topic that is related to the•
Knowledge Representation and Reasoning module, but it needs approval from
me.
Once you have chosen a particular paper, you may need more background on its topic
and will end up reading and citing other papers in the field (not necessarily only
those mentioned above).
Note that the above papers cover quite advanced topics, and some papers may include
challenging mathematical proofs, computational complexity analysis, and so on. You
are not expected to understand everything in detail. Just try your best to understand as
much as possible, and to express what you understood clearly in your report. You
will be assessed on the depth of your understanding relative to the difficulty of the
topic you choose. Important: Each student must select a different topic. You must
email me your first and second most preferred topic. I will allocate topics on a firstcome-
first-serve basis. So if your first choice is already chosen, I will allocate your
second preferred topic to you.
3 Guidelines for the Report
The best way to learn how to write research papers is to read research papers.
Students are encouraged to read papers to get a feel for the academic style of writing.
Below are guidelines on how to write-up your report. You may use it as a general
guide in structuring your final report. You may break down any part into sub-sections
and you may deviate from this structure based on your need. It is compulsory to
include Conclusion/Summary at the end of each section.
Abstract: This is usually an un-numbered section that summarizes, in a single
paragraph, what the report/paper aims to achieve and how it achieves it.
1. Introduction: This is usually one section. It should create interest in the paper,
and provide a brief overview of what it aims to do, and the way this contributes to our
knowledge. This section should also summarize what the rest of the sections contain.
2. Technical Part: In this part you provide the technical content (e.g. the details of
the work you are surveying). You begin from the general and slowly progress to the
specific. It is important for your work to be critical and to demonstrate deep
understanding of the specific topic you choose.
3. Future Prospects: In this part, you explore possible future research within the
area. You must clearly motivate the proposal based on your critical observations, and
specify exactly what you aim to achieve and why it is important. Also, try to specify
your methodology: how are you going to achieve the research plan?
4. Discussion and Conclusion: In this section, you summarize what you have done in
the report/paper, and you restate what your main contributions are. Of course if this is
only a survey/proposal paper, there are no “results” to summarize. You can also
reflect on some of the interesting aspects of the work, and on other interesting areas
which you did not have time or space to cover.
Bibliography & Citations
Be sure to include a standard, well-formatted, comprehensive bibliography with
citations from the text referring to previously published papers in the scientific
literature that you utilized or are related to your work. Always use a consistent
citation style for your references. The standard style used around the university is the
Harvard Style. However, I will accept any other standard style (e.g. APA style) as
long as it is used consistently.
Try to make your report EASY to read.
Be sure to include an overview in the beginning, which outlines what the report•
will be describing, in a section-by-section fashion.
Include simple examples (or better, a single simple example throughout), to help•
illustrate the ideas.
A picture is worth (at least) a thousand words. Use figures, flow-charts, graphs,•
whenever appropriate.
The material should be structured, and flow. It should NOT be a core-dump of•
everything you happened to read when you were looking at things related to X.
Readers (read “the people who will assign your grade!”) get annoyed by having to
wade through irrelevant material.
Also, proof-read your report. As a grader, I find it very irritating to read a report•
that has pages of easy-to-fix typos, illegible figures, missing citations, etc. And
you really don’t want to irritate the person who is assigning your grade…
Your report should be self-contained. You are allowed to copy figures from other•
sources (if they are properly credited). But if you do, be sure to define the terms
that appear in that figure!
Save trees — hand in a 2-sided version. And use section numbers, and page•
numbers!
4 Advice on Research Process
Following are some general guidelines to help you in the process of your research:
To make sure you have enough time to do the work, choose your topic•
quickly.
One consequence of fluidity in research is that your focus could change in the•
process. For example, while you work on a research problem, you discover
that one of its sub-problems is bigger than you initially thought. You can
change your focus and make that sub-problem your main research problem.
Most research papers discuss their own limitations in the “Discussion” or•
“Conclusion” section. These are good places for identifying weaknesses in
existing work. Many papers also have a “Related Work” section, in which the
paper is compared to previous literature. Reading these can help you in your
critical evaluation of the area.
Most computer scientists put their research papers on the Web. A Web search•
should be your first attempt to find any paper. If you cannot find a paper on
the Web, try the digital library access through the University of Edinburgh.
When you download a paper from someone’s Web page, do not simply•
reference the Web address you downloaded it from unless the paper only
exists in Web format. Try to find out which journal or conference the paper
appeared in, and reference that properly with all the details.
It is always a good idea to have an (evolving) outline of your report at all•
times. Do not leave writing until the end. The outline will eventually grow to
the full paper/report, and will act as a main organizing tool for your research.
5 Evaluation Criteria
The grading will be broken down based on the criteria described in Table below.
These criteria will be the basis for the feedback on your submission.
Deliverable Criterion Max Actual
Report based on quality of
report
Basic Criteria Understanding of the
Knowledge Representation
and Reasoning domain
(clarity, soundness,
significance, scientific
methods)
10%
Overall organization and
readability, academic
writing style. Supporting
documents are provided.
10%
Examples (i.e. different
from those given in the
sources)
5%
Referencing style and
completeness
5%
Total for Basic Criteria 30%
Additional
Criteria
Description of applications
of the topic selected
(domain-specific,
significance, etc.)
10%
Coverage of the selected
topic (breadth and depth)
15%
Strengths and weaknesses
in current work
15%
Conceptual and practical
causes for the weaknesses
identified
10%
Total for Additional Criteria 50%
Exceptional
Criteria
Demonstrated
understanding of state-ofthe-
art: How well is the
Survey structured? How
well does the report explain
existing work and related
work?
10%
Contribution to the field of
study. Critical evaluation of
selected domain for survey
and thoughtful analysis.
Originality for the field of
Understanding of the
Knowledge Representation
and Reasoning.
10%
Total for Exceptional Criteria 20%
Total for the assignment 100%
References
[1] Iddo Lev, Bill MacCartney, Christopher D. Manning, and Roger Levy,
“Solving Logic Puzzles: From Robust Processing to Precise Semantics”, 2nd
Workshop on Text Meaning and Interpretation, ACL’2004
[2] Dick Crouch and Tracy Holloway King. 2006. Semantics via F-structure
Rewriting. In the Proceedings of LFG06 Conference. CSLI On-line
Publications.
[3] Aoife Cahill, Mairéad McCarthy, Josef van Genabith and Andy Way
(2002) Automatic Annotation of the Penn-Treebank with LFG F-Structure
Information, LREC 2002 workshop on Linguistic Knowledge Acquisition and
Representation
[4] Hancox, PJ (2005) Lexical Functional Grammar constraints and concurrent
constraint programming. In: AI and Cognitive Science ’05: proceedings of the
16th Annual Conference. University of Ulster, pp. 309-318. ISBN
1859231977
[5] Avery D Andrews. 2010. Propositional Glue and the Correspondence
Architecture of LFG. Linguistics and Philosophy, 33:141-170.
[6] R Muskens. 2001. λ-Grammars and the Syntax-Semantics Interface. In Robert
van Rooy and Martin Stokhof, editors, Proceedings of the Thirteenth
Amsterdam Colloquium, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, pages 150-
155.
[7] Avery D Andrews. 2009. Grammatical vs. Lexical Constructors for Glue
Semantics. In Selected papers from the 2009 Conference of the Australian
Linguistic Society.
[8] Motik, B., Sattler, U. & Studer, R. 2005 .Query answering for OWL-DL with
rules, Journal of Web Semantics: Science, Services and Agents on the World
Wide Web 3(1), 41–60.
[9] F. van Harmelen, V. Lifschitz and B. Porter. 2008. Handbook of Knowledge
Representation, Chapter 23 Cognitive Robotics, Elsevier.