rkf/expression-composer.html

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<P align=center><B><FONT FACE=ARIAL COLOR=blue SIZE=+1>Expression Composer</A> </FONT></B></P>


<PRE>
       
       Yolanda Gil (gil@isi.edu, (310)448-8794) 
       Jihie Kim (jihie@isi.edu, (310)448-8769) 
       Jim Blythe (blythe@isi.edu, (310)448-8251) 
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<B><I><FONT SIZE=+1>Expression Composer</B></FONT></I>


<p>
During the summer evaluation, users frequently had difficulty finding an
object in a CMAP that was not linked in a place they expected, or was
referred to in a different way. We witnessed similar problems during the
HPKB year 2 evaluation where, for example, a SME wanted to refer to "the
units" to access the military units involved in a task, but the
knowledge base required the more precise expression "the units of the
blue forces assigned to the task". This spurred our development of the
Expression Composer (EC), which takes an imprecise user expression and
searches for a valid KB representation that matches the expression.

<p>
We have already built the Expression Composer, which works with the
EXPECT English editor, and which sparked quite a bit of interest when we
demoed it in Tucson.  Our current EC takes an expression that the user
types, such as "max airport landing", and shows the user precise
expressions based on the exact representation of those terms in the KB,
such as "find the maximum of the available landing distance of the
runways of the airport" (see
<a href="http://www.isi.edu/expect/rkf/composer.ppt">
http://www.isi.edu/expect/rkf/composer.ppt</a>). In this way the EC
allows users to make imprecise statements and still refer to relevant
entities in the KB.

<p>
While the Shaken project has shown in year one that the graphical
approach to knowledge entry is an effective one, we need to develop ways
to help users manage the clutter that can easily appear as CMAPs get
larger.  We'd like to integrate the EC with SHAKEN and KM, and extend it
to support not only KB search but also search/expansions on a CMAP to
support faster knowledge entry. For example, by typing "cell nucleus"
the user could open relevant CMAPS in which the paths leading to the
appropriate objects are already expanded. This provides a useful tool to
help reduce CMAP clutter.

<p>
Another extension would be to use lexical/linguistic resources such as
thesauri (our SME dictionary and others). This would allow the composer
to handle constructs such as the use of the possessive (e.g. "the cell's
membrane") and synonyms, and would help us move towards a more natural
interaction style for SMEs. We expect to draw from related work in
conceptual query systems for information retrieval (e.g. [Sparck-Jones
and Willett 97; Cunningham 99]).

<p>
A very important new area that this would allow us to embark on is
helping a user teach the system techno-speak, i.e., domain-specific
vocabulary that will make the student use more technical terms to
describe what was learned. This is something human teachers do once the
student has conceptually understood the material, and we can see that
SHAKEN this past year was built to do that part of understanding the
material but had no facilities to let a user teach it to speak in domain
terms proficiently.

<p>
A brief description of the expression composer is given in
<a href="http://www.isi.edu/expect/papers/blythe-ijcai01.pdf">this IJCAI
paper</a>, in section 4. More details can be found in
<a href="http://www.isi.edu/expect/rkf/composer.ppt">
these powerpoint slides</a>.

<HR>
<p> <A HREF="http://www.isi.edu/expect/"> EXPECT Homepage</A>.</P>
<p> <A HREF="http://www.isi.edu/expect/projects/rkf/"> RKF Homepage</A>.</P>

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