Praktika and Projects in SS 2013

Technische Universität Dresden Institut für Theoretische Informatik Lehrstuhl für Automatentheorie

Initial meeting

takes place on April 19th at 15:00 in Room INF-3027. Attending the initial meeting is mandatory for participation in the praktika and/or project.
People who want to participate in the praktikum/project, but have serious reasons to not attend the initial meeting, please contact Rafael Peñaloza (CL Projects, Master-Praktikum) or Anni-Yasmin Turhan (Komplexpraktikum, Diplom-Praktikum) before April 18.

Position in curriculum

- Diplomstudiengang Informatik (Diplom- und Bakkalaureatsabschluß), ab 5. Semester; Wahlpflichtveranstaltung (-/-/4); INF-PM-FPG (-/-/8)
- Course of studies Computation Logic; project (12 credits)
- Masterstudiengang Informatik; Wahlpflichtveranstaltung (-/-/8)

Prerequisites

for computer scientists: Pflichtvorlesung "Grundlagen der Theoretischen Informatik"

Organisation

-There will be an initial meeting (see above) where different topics will be proposed to the students. Students can chose from the offered topics, one to work on. Important the number of hours of the topic must coincide with the hours required for the praktikum/project.
- Students interested in participating, but unable to assist to the initial meeting should contact Rafael Peñaloza or Anni-Yasmin Turhan to discuss possible solutions.
- Each student is assigned a tutor, depending on the topic chosen. During the semester, there will be regular meetings of the student and his tutor.
- The results of the praktikum/project will be presented at the end of the semester in a talk given by the student.

Language

Concerning the final presentations, students may choose to present their work in German or in English.

Participants Duties

The participants are expected to read the relevant literature, and to discuss it with their tutor in order to become acquainted with the topic chosen. The required implementation work (if any) should be carried out in a structured way, and has to be documented appropriately. If a topic is shared by two or more participants, acquiring team-working skills is another goal of the project. The results of the project have to be described in a project paper (~15 pages) and presented in a 30 minutes talk at the end of the semester.

It is also the duty of the participants to reserve enough time for performing the project. The sharp deadline for finishing the project is the beginning of the following semester, i.e. the allowed time for the project is one semester plus the following semester break. Failure to finish the project in time will result in no credits to be given. It is the obligation of the participant to start the project in time, and to make appointments with the supervisor for regular meetings during the semester.

Topics

When choosing a topic, please take into account the knowledge you have already acquired. For example, if you'd like to do a project concerning knowledge representation, you are expected to have successfully attended the lecture "Logic-based knowledge representation" before starting the project.

(1) Finite Herbrand Models for Horn Clauses

Deciding the existence of finite Herbrand models for certain sets of first-order anti-Horn clauses is ExpTime-complete. The aim of this project is to analyze the computational complexity of the same problem for Horn clauses by finding a hardness proof and/or a decision procedure.
This project requires basic knowledge about first-order logic and complexity theory.

Tutor: Barbara Morawska

(2) Finite Herbrand Models for anti-Horn Clauses

The aim of this project is to implement and optimize an algorithm for deciding the existence of finite Herbrand models for certain sets of first-order anti-Horn clauses. The program should be evaluated on a representative set of input problems. The programming language can be chosen by the student.
This project requires basic knowledge about first-order logic and good programming skills.

Tutor: Stefan Borgwardt

(3) Finding the Best Explanations

When dealing with vast ammounts of knowledge, it is important to be able to explain why some consequence holds. Typically, a single consequence can have more than one explanation. The aim of this project is to study methods for computing the best explanation efficiently, when possible, and identifying the cases where this is a hard problem.
Basic knowledge of complexity theory and Description Logics is useful, but not required.

Tutor: Rafael Peñaloza

(4) Implementing An Ontology Debugging Tool

As ontologies grow in size, so increases the need for a tool that helps debugging unexpected consequences of their knowledge. The goal of this project is to implement a tool that receives as input information from a user on which consequences should be removed and which should remain, and suggests minimal changes to satisfy these conditions. The tool is allowed to call external reasoners and editors, if needed.
This is a practical topic that requires good programming skills.

Tutor: Rafael Peñaloza

(5) Evaluating Axiom-Learning from Data

Constructing ontologies is an expensive and time-consuming task. The goal of this project is to experimentally evaluate an approach of learning terminological axioms from data, which are "almost true" in the data. To this end, existing software should be applied to new data sets and the results should be evaluated for reasonability.
This project does not require extensive programming. However, it is necessary to understand the underlying theory to a certain extent, and it is thus helpful to have prior knowledge of Description Logics and Formal Concept Analysis.

Tutor: Daniel Borchmann

More topics t.b.a.