Using Reasoning to Decide the Answer to a Decision Question Involving an Opinion Adjective

dc.contributor.advisorCheng, Kam-Hoi
dc.contributor.committeeMemberHuang, Stephen
dc.contributor.committeeMemberVedam, Rajkumar
dc.creatorLi, Huijie 1992-
dc.date.accessioned2019-09-13T20:41:09Z
dc.date.available2019-09-13T20:41:09Z
dc.date.createdMay 2017
dc.date.issued2017-05
dc.date.submittedMay 2017
dc.date.updated2019-09-13T20:41:09Z
dc.description.abstractCommunication ability is an important feature of humans. Artificial Intelligence is to simulate human learning, understanding, and thinking processes by a computer program. A Learning Program System (ALPS) has been developed enabling computers to understand knowledge, to learn English grammar, and to read English sentences. Here, we intend to improve the communication ability of ALPS. The focus of this thesis is to understand and answer the decision question involving an opinion adjective. Humans can learn notions easily, like "importance". However, it is difficult for a computer to understand notions well because notions are abstract and difficult to quantify. This thesis analyzes the human's learning process of notions and creates a logical inference algorithm to simulate the human's thinking process. A human learns a new notion by learning the various criteria required to justify the use of an adjective of the notion. The criteria include both examples and important factors. We created a knowledge-based method to simulate the process of learning a notion with various criteria. In our knowledge-based method, we abstract knowledge components of a notion: scales, factors, and examples of each factor. Given the target, the adjective, and the reference that represent a decision question, our inference algorithm first matches the target with the examples. If not matched, it then measures the similarity between the target and the examples based on the reason why each example is considered to be an example. After that, a heuristic search will search the factors. Our program will give a "Yes" if the target can satisfy any factor; otherwise, it will give a "No". In addition, an associated reason is also provided to justify the answer.
dc.description.departmentComputer Science, Department of
dc.format.digitalOriginborn digital
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdf
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10657/4531
dc.language.isoeng
dc.rightsThe author of this work is the copyright owner. UH Libraries and the Texas Digital Library have their permission to store and provide access to this work. Further transmission, reproduction, or presentation of this work is prohibited except with permission of the author(s).
dc.subjectArtificial intelligence
dc.subjectQuestion Answering
dc.subjectLogic reasoning
dc.titleUsing Reasoning to Decide the Answer to a Decision Question Involving an Opinion Adjective
dc.type.dcmiText
dc.type.genreThesis
thesis.degree.collegeCollege of Natural Sciences and Mathematics
thesis.degree.departmentComputer Science, Department of
thesis.degree.disciplineComputer Science
thesis.degree.grantorUniversity of Houston
thesis.degree.levelMasters
thesis.degree.nameMaster of Science

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