Komplexpraktikum/Project in SS 2006


The initial meeting
The initial meeting will take place on April 7th, at 13:00-14:00 in Room 151.
Students who are interested in working on a project, but cannot attend the meeting, are asked to consult with Barbara Morawska (room 434, email: morawska@tcs.inf.tu-dresden.de) preferably not later than the first week of the semester.

Position in curriculum
- Diplomstudiengang Informatik (Diplom- und Bakkalaureatsabschluß), ab 5. Semester ;Wahlpflichtveranstaltung (-/-/4)
- Course of studies Computation Logic; project (12 credits)

Prerequisites
for computer scientists: Pflichtvorlesung "Grundlagen der Theoretischen Informatik"

Organisation
- At the initial meeting (see above) students are presented with available topics. Students then have the opportunity to choose a topic to work on.
- 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 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) Implementation of Tools for the Term Rewriting lecture.
This project is a continuation of the project from the last year. Look at the description here.

The project requires knowledge (or fast learning) of programming in Java and automatic editing of files in the Unix environment. The main task will be to find and install new automated tools under existing framework, inventing examples and exercises useful for the students of the Term Rewriting Systems, and writing a manual with a documentation of the work done. If no systems suitable for the required tasks (e.g.computing normal forms) are found, the student would have to write his/her own program, based on the code in the textbook "Term Rewriting and All That".

Literature:
  • Database of Rewriting Systems, http://rewriting.loria.fr/
  • Franz Baader, Tobias Nipkow. Term Rewriting and All That, Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Prerequisites: Lecture "Term Rewriting Systems"

Tutor: Dr. Barbara Morawska,



(2) From encyclopedia knowledge to an ontology

In this project, the student is supposed to develop an ontology for some specific area from the relevant articles of Wikipedia, using one of the existing ontology editors. The area should be large enough to obtain interesting information and to justify the term "ontology". By generating the subsumption hierarchy for the terms used, the student shall determine the consistency of the information presented by Wikipedia, in particular answer the following questions:

  • Do the subsumptions acquired by reasoning match those that are given explicitly in the "categories" section of the article?
  • If new subsumptions are found: are they correct or do they indicate wrong information?
  • If inconsistent concepts are found: what causes the inconsistency?

Literature:
  • Baader et al.: The DL Handbook. Cambridge 2003.

Prerequisites: Lecture "Logic-based Knowledge Respresentation"

Tutor:Jan Hladik



(3) Implementation of Attribute Exploration for Description Logic Knowledge Bases

The project is developing a tool that implements the attribute exploration method of Formal Concept Analysis (FCA) for exploring Description Logic (DL) ABoxes. One of the main modules of the implementation would be a module that deals with implications and computes implicational closure. Another one would be a module that computes the closed sets for a given set of implications. The other one would be a module that communicates with a DL tool that supports reasoning with large number of individuals, namely Instance Store. The student is supposed to implement and have a prototype of two of these modules until the end of May. The project requires some knowledge of FCA, especially for computing the closed sets, and knowledge of Java programming language.

Sources:

Tutor:Baris Sertkaya



Barbara Morawska