THE EFFECT OF DATA STRUCTURES MODIFICATIONS ON ALGORITHMS FOR REASONING OPERATIONS USING A CONCEPTUAL GRAPHS KNOWLEDGE BASE BY HEATHER DAY PFEIFFER, B.S., M.S. A dissertation submitted to the Graduate School in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy Subject: Computer Science New Mexico State University Las Cruces, New Mexico December 2007 Copyright c 2007 by Heather Day Pfeiffer, B.S., M.S. “The Effect of Data Structures Modifications On Algorithms for Reasoning Operations Using a Conceptual Graphs Knowledge Base,” a dissertation prepared by Heather Day Pfeiffer, B.S., M.S. in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree, Doctor of Philosophy, has been approved and accepted by the following: Linda Lacey Dean of the Graduate School Roger T. Hartley Chair of the Examining Committee Date Committee in charge: Dr. Roger T. Hartley, Chair Dr. Desh Ranjan Dr. Clinton Jeffery Dr. Jeanine Cook ii DEDICATION This Dissertation is dedicated to my husband, Dr. Joseph J. Pfeiffer, Jr. who has supported me through "thick and thin", my children, Joseph “Joel” III and Rebecca “Becca” who have seen "Mom" work on a degree all their lives, my parents, Lloyd and Barbara Day who have always believed in education and instilled that belief in their children, and my in-laws (may they rest in peace) Joe and Mary Elizabeth “Betty” Pfeiffer. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS David J. Benn, from the University of South Australia at Adelaide, for working to help intergrat his ‘pCG’ system with the CPE "Operations" module and help in testing and debugging comparison tests with CPE and pCG. Dr. John F. Sowa who gave me some very lively discussions on growing ideas of Con- ceptual Structures and especially Conceptual Graphs. Also, for allowing me to work with and expand on his original CGIF format. Dr. Jean-François Baget and Dr. Madalina Croitoru who have taught me much about Simple Conceptual Graphs (SCGs) and how relation hierarchies make great Supports for SCGs. Also for evaluating and discussing some of the theoretical finds of this dis- sertation. All the past and current AI graduate students at New Mexico State University, in partic- ular, Dr. Melanie Martin, Nemecio “Chito” Chavez, Jr., Dr. Dan Tappan and Dr. Tom O’Hara. The hard work of my committee, in particular, Dr. Clinton Jeffery who carefully looked at both content and formatting of all the chapters and traveled all the way back from Idaho, and Dr. Jeanine Cook who kept me "on track" and over the bumps in the roads. iv VITA February 11, 1955 Born in Dallas, Texas, USA June1977 B.S.inMicrobiology/BiologyfromUniversityofWashington 1980-1984 SystemsAnalystatTheBoeingCompanyinSeattle, Washington May 1988 M.S. in Computer Science from New Mexico State University 1987-2007 ComputerConsultantbasedinLasCruces,NewMexico 2005-2006 SeniorComputerScientistatHortonTechnicalAssociates, Inc. in Las Cruces, New Mexico Professional Societies Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) IEEE Computer Society The American Society for Information Systems and Technology (ASIS&T) New Mexico Network for Women in Science and Engineering (NMNWSE) Publications H.D. Pfeiffer and R.T. Hartley. Semantic additions to conceptual programming. In Proc. of the Fourth Annual Workshop on Conceptual Structures, Detroit, MA, 1989. v M.J. Coombs, R.T. Hartley, H.D. Pfeiffer, and B. Kilgore. How to become immune to facts. In Proc. Rocky Mountain Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Las Cruces, NM, June 1990. H.D. Pfeiffer and R.T. Hartley. Additions for set representation and processing to con- ceptual programming. In Proc. of the Fifth Annual Workshop on Conceptual Structures, pages 131–140, Boston&Stockholm, 1990. H.D. Pfeiffer and R.T. Hartley. The Conceptual Programming Environment, CP: Rea- soning representation using graph structures and operations. In Proc. of IEEE Work- shop on Visual Languages, Kobe, Japan, 1991. M.J. Coombs, H.D. Pfeiffer, and R.T. Hartley. e-MGR: an Architecture for Symbolic Plasticity. In the special issue of International Journal of Man-Machine Studies on in Symbolic Problem Solving in Noisy, Novel, and Uncertain Task Environments, 36:1–17, 1992. C.A. Fields, H.D. Pfeiffer, and T.C. Eskridge. Knowledge representation and control in gm1, and automated dna sequence analysis system based on the MGR architecture. In International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, 34:549–573,1992. R.T. Hartley, H.D. Pfeiffer, and D. Qui. Representation for Viewgen: Structures and Reasoning. In Workshop on Propositional Knowledge Representation, Stanford, CA, 1992. H.D. Pfeiffer and R.T. Hartley. The Conceptual Programming Environment, CP. In T.E. Nagle, J.A. Nagle, L.L. Gerholz, and P. W. Ekland, editors, Conceptual Structures: Current Research and Practice, Ellis Horwood Workshops. Ellis Horwood, 1992. H.D. Pfeiffer and R.T. Hartley. Temporal, spatial, and constraint handling in the Con- ceptual Programming Environment, CP. Journal of Experimental and Theoretical AI, 4(2):167–182,1992. H.D. Pfeiffer and T.E. Nagle, editors. Conceptual Structures: Theory and Implementa- tion, volume 754 of LNAI. Springer-Verlag, Heidelberg, W. Germany, 1993. H.D. Pfeiffer and B.J. Waltar. Automated message analysis using the Conceptual Pro- gramming Environment, CP. In G. Ellis and P. Ekland, editors, Supp. Proc. of the 3rdInternational Conference On Conceptual Structures, Santa Cruz, CA, 1995. vi H.D. Pfeiffer and R.T. Hartley. Visual CP representation of knowledge. In G. Stumme, editor, Working with Conceptual Structures - Contributions to ICCS 2000, Shaker- Verlag. pages 175–188, 2000. H.D. Pfeiffer and R.T. Hartley. ARCEdit - CG editor. In CGTools Workshop Pro- ceedings in connection with ICCS 2001, Stanford, CA, 2001. [Online Access: July 2001] URL:http://www.cs.nmsu.edu/ hdp/CGTOOLS/proceedings/index.html. H.D. Pfeiffer and R.T. Hartley, editors. CGTools Workshop Proceedings in connec- tion with ICCS 2001, Stanford, CA, 2001. [Online Access: July 2001] URL:http://www.cs.nmsu.edu/ hdp/CGTOOLS/proceedings/index.html. R.T. Hartley and H.D. Pfeiffer. Data models for Conceptual Structures. In Foundations and Applications of Conceptual Structures, Contributions to ICCS 2002. ICCS2002, 2002. K.E. Wolff, H.D. Pfeiffer, and H.S. Delugach, editors. Conceptual Structures at Work, volume 3127 of LNAI. ICCS2004, Springer, July 2004. H.D. Pfeiffer, K.E. Wolff, and H.S. Delugach, editors. Conceptual Structures at Work, Contributions to ICCS 2004, Aachen, July 2004. ICCS2004, Shaker Verlag. H.D. Pfeiffer. An exportable CGIF module from the CP environment: A pragmatic approach. In K.E. Wolff, H.D. Pfeiffer, and H.S. Delugach, editors, Conceptual Struc- tures at Work, volume 3127 of LNAI, pages 319–332. ICCS2004, Springer, July 2004. M.A. Keeler and H.D. Pfeiffer. Collaboratory testbed partnerships as a knowledge capture challenge. In P. Clark and G. Schreiber, editors, Proceedings of the Third Inter- national Conference on Knowledge Capture, pages 203–204. KCAP’05, ACM Press, October 2005. M.A. Keeler and H.D. Pfeiffer. Games of inquiry for collaborative concept structuring. In F. Dau, M-L Mugnier, and G. Stumme, editors, Conceptual Structures: Common Se- mantics for Sharing Knowledge, ICCS2005, pages 396–410, Berlin, Springer-Verlag, LNAI 3596, July 2005. H.D. Pfeiffer. Games for co-evolution of digital resources and knowledge tools. In Information Realities: Shaping the Digital Future for All, ASIS&T 2006, Austin, TX, November 2006. vii M.A. Keeler and H.D. Pfeiffer. Building a pragmatic methodology for KR tool re- search and development. In H. Scharfe, P. Hitzler, and P. Ohrstrom, editors, Conceptual Structures: Inspiration and Application, ICCS2006, pages 314–330, Berlin, Springer- Verlag, LNAI 4068, July 2006. H.D. Pfeiffer and R.T. Hartley. A comparison of different conceptual structures projec- tion algorithms. In U. Priss, S. Polovina, and R. Hill, editors, Conceptual Structures: Knowledge Architectures for Smart Applications, ICCS’07, pages 165–178, Berlin Hei- delberg, Springer-Verlag, LNAI 4604, July 2007. H.D. Pfeiffer and J.J. Pfeiffer, Jr. Representation levels within knowledge represen- tation. In U. Priss, S. Polovina, and R. Hill, editors, Conceptual Structures: Knowl- edge Architectures for Smart Applications, ICCS’07, pages 484–487, Berlin Heidel- berg, Springer-Verlag, LNAI 4604, July 2007. H.D. Pfeiffer, N.R. Chavez, Jr., and J.J. Pfeiffer, Jr. CPE design considering inter- operability. In H.D. Pfeiffer, A. Kabbaj, and D.J. Benn, editors, CS-TIW 2007 Second Conceptual Structures Tool Interoperability Workshop, pages 71–75, 2007. H.D. Pfeiffer, A. Kabbaj, and D.J. Benn, editors. CS-TIW 2007 Second Conceptual Structures Tool Interoperability Workshop.Research Press International, 2007. Field of Study Major field: Artificial Intelligence Conceptual Structures viii ABSTRACT THE EFFECT OF DATA STRUCTURES MODIFICATIONS ON ALGORITHMS FOR REASONING OPERATIONS USING A CONCEPTUAL GRAPHS KNOWLEDGE BASE BY HEATHER DAY PFEIFFER, B.S., M.S. Doctor of Philosophy New Mexico State University Las Cruces, New Mexico, 2007 Dr. Roger T. Hartley, Chair Knowledge representation (KR) is used to store and retrieve meaningful in- formation. Meaning cannot be directly stored in the computer; therefore, a series of levels of representation transforms knowledge to a format that a computer can process. This transformed knowledge is saved using dynamic data structures that are suitable for the style of KR being implemented, and through the KR the system manipulates the knowledge in the data using reasoning operations. The data structure,