Reasoning over cyclical directed graphical models
AssigneeInternational Business Machines Corporation
InventorDavid W. Buchanan
Life of this patent
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Abstract
According to an aspect, a cyclical directed graphical model that includes a plurality of nodes connected by directed edges is accessed. Each directed edge has an edge strength indicating a degree of relation between the nodes, and each node has a value and a state of either active or inactive. A first node that has at least one directed incoming edge from a second node having a state of active is selected. At least a subset of the nodes in the cyclical directed graphical model are traversed in a reverse direction relative to the directed edges. The traversing is performed along a path starting from the second node and ending at a third node having a state of active. If the path does not include the first node, an inference about a value of the first node is proposed based on a value of the second node.
Claims8
A method comprising:
- receiving a natural language question at a question answer (QA) system;
- and
- generating, by the QA system, a set of possible answers to the natural language question, the generating comprising:
- accessing a cyclical directed graphical model in a data store, the cyclical directed graphical model comprising a plurality of nodes connected by directed edges, each directed edge having an edge strength indicating a degree of relation between the nodes, and each node having a value and a state, the state being one of either active or inactive;
- selecting a first node from the plurality of nodes, the first node having at least one incoming directed edge from a second node in the plurality of nodes, the incoming directed edge having an edge strength greater than zero, and the second node having a state of active;
- traversing at least a subset of the plurality of nodes in the cyclical directed graphical model in a reverse direction relative to the directed edges, the traversing performed along a path starting from the second node and ending at a third node having a state of active, wherein the traversing is along a plurality of paths including the path that starts from the second node and ends at the third node;
- and
- based on the plurality of paths not including the first node, determining an inference about a value of the first node based on a value of the second node, the inference utilized to generate the set of possible answers to the natural language question.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.