Lecture Notes in Computer Science Edited by J

Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence 1418 Subseries of Lecture Notes in Computer Science Edited by J. G. Carbonell and J. Siekmann

Lecture Notes in Computer Science Edited by G. Goos, J. Hartmanis and J. van Leeuwen Robert E. Mercer Eric Neufeld (Eds.)

Advances in A'~"rtltlClal " "Intelligence

12th Biennial Conference of the Canadian Society for Computational Studies of Intelligence, AI'98 Vancouver, BC, Canada, June 18-20, 1998 Proceedings

~ Springer Series Editors Jaime G. Carbonell, Carnegie Melton Universit~ Pittsburgh, PA, USA Jfrg Siekmann, University of Saarland, Saarbriicken, Germany

Volume Editors Robert E. Mercer Department of Computer Science, University of Western Ontario London, ON, N6A 5B7, Canada E-mail: [email protected]

Eric Neufetd Department of Computer Science, University of Saskatchewan 57 Campus Drive, Saskatoon, SK, S7N 5A9, Canada E-mail: [email protected]

Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for

Die Deutsche Bibliothek - CIP-Einheitsaufnahme

Advances in artificial intelligence : proceedings / AI '98, Vancouver, BC, Canada, June 18 - 20, 1998. Robert Mercer ; Eric Neufeldt (ed.). - Berlin ; Heidelberg ; New York ; Barcelona ; Budapest ; Hong Kong ; London ; Milan ; Paris ; Santa Clara ; Singapore ; Tokyo : Springer, 1998 (... biennial conference of the Canadian Society for Computational Studies of Intelligence ; 12) (Lecture notes in computer science ; Vol. 1418 : Lecture notes in artificial intelligence) ISBN 3-540-64575-6

CR Subject Classification (1991): 1.2

ISBN 3-540-64575-6 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg New York

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, re-use of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other way, and storage in data banks. Duplication of this publication or parts thereof is permitted only under the provisions of the German Copyright Law of September 9, 1965, in its current version, and permission for use must always be obtained from Springer-Verlag. Violations are liable for prosecution under the German Copyright Law. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 1998 Printed in Germany Typesetting: Camera ready by author SPIN 10637401 06/3142 - 5 4 3 2 1 0 Printed on acid-free paper Preface

AI'98 is the 12th in the series of biennial Artificial Intelligence conferences spon- sored by the Canadian Society for Computational Studies of Intelligence/Socidt~ canadienne pour l'Stude de l'intelligence par ordinateur. As in recent years the conference is being held in conjunction with the annual conferences of two other Canadian societies and is collectively known as AI/GI/VI'98. The Canadian AI conference has a long tradition of attracting international papers of high quality from a variety of AI research areas. All papers submitted to the conference received three independent reviews. Fewer than half of the submitted papers were accepted to appear in the proceedings. A journal version of the best paper of the conference will be invited to appear in Computational Intelligence. The conference has always explicitly cultivated international par- ticipation. Papers were received from six continents, and this diversity is repre- sented in these proceedings. Once again we have maintained a single track format but for the first time have provided the authors with two different presentation venues: a number of topic focussed plenary sessions and a general poster session. A highlight of the conference continues to be the invited speakers. This year, four speakers, Oren Etzioni, Ken Ford, Stuart Russell, and Jonathan Schaeffer, are our guests. Conference success depends upon the hard work of a large number of indi- viduals. We gratefully acknowledge the members of the program committee who helped coordinate the refereeing of all of the submitted papers. They also made a number of important recommendations regarding various aspects of the program. Thanks also to the many referees who reviewed the papers. Their efforts were obvious in the detailed and constructive reviews, all done within a very tight schedule. Our gratitude goes to those who organized various conference events and helped with other conference matters: Franz Oppacher, Una-May O'Reilly, Wayne Davis, Rob Walker, Sandra McKay, Marjorie Francis, Luiz Merkle, and Jim Morey. We also appreciate the cooperation we have received from Springer- Verlag, especially Alfred Hoffmann. Finally, we would like to acknowledge the participants. Enjoy yourselves.

April 1998 Bob Mercer Eric Neufeld Program Co-chairs, AI'98 The University of Western Ontario and The University of Saskatchewan VI Organization

AI'98 is organized by the Canadian Society for Computational Studies of Intel- ligence/Soci~t~ canadienne pour l'6tude de l'intelligenee par ordinateur.

Program Committee

Conference Chair: Wayne Davis, The University of Alberta (emeritus) Program Co-chairs: Robert E. Mercer, The University of Western Ontario Eric Neufeld, The University of Saskatchewan Organizing Chairs: Dan Fuss, Simon Fraser University Fred Popowich, Simon Fraser University Workshops: Franz Oppacher, Carleton University Una-May O'Reilly, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Committee Members: Peter van Beek, University of Alberta Craig Boutilier, University of British Columbia Chrysanne DiMarco, University of Waterloo Jim Greer, University of Saskatchewan Howard Hamilton, University of Regina Graeme Hirst, University of Toronto Dekung Lin, University of Manitoba Charles Ling, University of Western Ontario Joel Martin, National Research Council Paul McFetridge, Simon Fraser University Peter Patel-Schneider, AT&T Research Jonathan Schaeffer, University of Alberta Fei Song, University of Guelph Bruce Spencer, University of New Brunswick Ahmed Tawfik, Wilfred Laurier University Andre Trudel, Acadia University Yang Xiang, University of Regina Qiang Yang, Simon Fraser University vii

Referees

Aijun An Jim Greer Brad Nickerson John Barron Russell Greiner Charlie Obimbo Peter van Beck Howard Hamilton Franz Oppacher Yngvi Bjornsson T. Heift Wanlin Pang Craig Boutilier Graeme Hirst Denis Papp Christina Carrick Morten Irgens Peter F. Patel-Schneider Brahim Chaib-draa W. Ken Jackson Sharad Sachdev Jianhua Chen Andreas Junghanns Jonathan Schaeffer Howard Cheng Edward Kim Danny Silver Paulina Chin George K. Knopf Fei Song Veronica Dahl Catherine Leung Bruce Spencer Nicolas Demers Dekang Lin Ahmed Tawfik Chrysanne DiMarco Charles Ling Janine Toole Roy Eagleson Hanan Lutfiyya Davide Turcato Eugene Eberbach Brien Maguire Andre Trudel Wael Farag Joel Martin George Tsiknis Denis Gagne Stan Matwin Kay Wiese Daya Gaur Paul McFetridge Y. Xiang Lev Goldfarb Guy Mineau Qiang Yang

Sponsoring Institutions

BC Advanced Systems Institute Simon Fraser University Table of Contents

Planning, Constraints, Search and Databases Sokoban: Evaluating Standard Single-Agent Search Techniques in the Presence of Deadlock ...... 1 Andreas Junghanns, Jonathan Sehaeffer (University of Alberta) A Heuristic Incremental Modeling Approach to Course Timetabling ..... 16 Don Banks, Peter van Beck (University of Alberta), Amnon Meisels (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev) Planning Strategy Representation in DoLittle ...... 30 Jacky Baltes (University of Auckland) Establishing Logical Connectivity between Query Keywords and Database Contents ...... 45 Dong-Guk Shin, Lung-Yung Chu (University of Connecticut)

Applications

Test-Driving TANKA: Evaluating a Semi-automatic System of Text Analysis for Knowledge Acquisition ...... 60 Ken Barker (University of Ottawa), Sylvain Delisle (Universitd du Quebec ~t Trois-Rivi~res), Stan Szpakowicz (University of Ottawa) An Object Indexing Methodology as Support to Object Recognition ...... 72 Guy W. Mineau, Mounsif Lahboub, Jean-Marie Beaulieu (Universitd Laval)

Oracles and Assistants: Machine Learning Applied to Network Supervision 86 Richard Nock (Laboraloire d'Informatique, de Robotique et de Microdlectronique de Montpellier), Babak Esfandiari (Mitel Corporation)

A Common Multi-agent Testbed for Diverse Seamless Personal Information Networking Applications ...... 99 Suhayya Abu-Hakima, Ramiro Liscano, Roger Impey (National Research Council of Canada)

Genetic Algorithms

A ttybrid Genetic Algorithm for the Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows ...... 114 Jean Berger, Martin Salois, Regent Begin (Defence Research Establishment Valcartier) Maintaining Genetic Diversity in Genetic Algorithms through Co-evolution 128 Jason Morrison~ Franz Oppacher (Carleton University)

The Effect of Genetic Operator Probabilities and Selection Strategies on the Performance of a Genetic Algorithm ...... 139 Kay Wiese, Scott D. Goodwin (University of Regina)

The Impact of External Dependency in Genetic Programming Primitives.. 154 Una-May O'ReiIIy (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Learning and Natural Language

Quality Control in the Concept Learning Process ...... 169 Udo Hahn, Klemens Schnattinger (Freiburg University)

Grapheme Generation in Learning to Read English Words ...... 184 Charles X. Ling, Bei Zhang (University of Western Ontario)

A Trainable Bracketer for Noun Modifiers ...... 196 Ken Barker (University of Ottawa) Posters

Lessons Learned in the Development and Implementation of a Bilingual Nationally Accessible Knowledge-Based System ...... 211 Brett Hodges (Revenue Canada)~ Larry Hodgson (DRT Systems International)

Selecting the Next Action with Constraints ...... 220 Toby Donaldson, Robin Cohen (University of Waterloo)

Poker as a Testbed for AI Research ...... 228 Darse Billings, Denis Papp, Jonathan Schaeffer, Duane Szafron (University of Alberta)

Fault Prediction in the Telephone Access Loop Using a Neural Network... 239 Bengt R. Knudsen (Norwegian University of Science and Technology)

Learning English Syllabification Rules ...... 246 Jian Zhang, Howard J. Hamilton (University of Regina)

Characterizing Tractable CSPs ...... 259 Wanlin Pang (National Research Council of Canada), Scott D. Goodwin (University of Regina)

An Attribute Redundancy Measure for Clustering ...... 273 Teresa Gonfalves, Fernando Moura-Pires (Universidade Nova de Lisboa) XI

On the Complexity of VLSI-Friendly Neural Networks for Classification Problems ...... 285 Sorin Draghici (Wayne State University)

Strings Clustering and Statistical Validation of Clusters ...... 298 M. Sebban, A.M. Landraud-Lamole (Universitd des Antilles et de la Guyane)

Finding Partitions for Learning Control of Dynamic Systems ...... 310 Michael McGarity (University of New South Wales) Reasoning

A Relational Modeling of Cognitive Maps ...... 322 B. Chaib-draa (Universitd Laval)

Distance Constraint Arrays: A Model for Reasoning on Intervals with Qualitative and Quantitative Distances ...... 334 Steffan Staab, Udo Hahn (Freiburg University)

Revising TimeGraph-II ...... 349 James P. Delgrande, Arvind Gupta (Simon Fraser University)

Uncertainty

Temporally Invariant Junction Tree for Inference in Dynamic Bayesian Network ...... 363 Y. Xiang (University of Regina)

Utility Theory-Based User Models for Intelligent Interface Agents ...... 378 Scott M. Brown (Air Force Institute of Technology), Eugene Santos Jr. (University of Connecticut), SheiIa B. Banks (Air Force Institute of Technology)

A Hybrid Convergent Method for Learning Probabilistic Networks ...... 393 Jun Liu, Kuo-Chu Chang, Jing Zhou (George Mason University)

Learning

Relational Concepts and the Fourier Transform: An Empirical Study ..... 411 Eduardo Pirez (Universidad Autdnoma de Madrid), Larry Rendetl (University of Illinois)

ELEM2: A Learning System for More Accurate Classifications ...... 426 Aijun An, Nick Cercone (University of Waterloo)

Sequential Instance-Based Learning ...... 442 Susan L. Epstein, Jenngang Shih (Hunter College and The Graduate School of the City University of New York) Xtl

Predicate Invention from a Few Examples ...... 455 Riverson Rios, Stan Matwin (University of Ottawa)

Author Index ...... 467