The paper considers various formalisms based on Automata, Temporal Logic and Regular Expressions for specifying queries over sequences. Unlike traditional binary semantics, the paper presents a similarity based semantics for thse formalisms. More specifically, a distance measure in the range [0,1] is associated with a sequence, query pair denoting how closely the sequence satisfies the query. These measures are defined using a spectrum of normed vector distance measures. Various distance measures based on the syntax and the traditional semantics of the query are presented. Efficient algorithms for computing these distance measure are presented. These algorithms can be employed for retrieval of sequence from a database that closely satisfy a given.
There have been various formalisms for representing uncertainty (see @cite_21 ) such as probability measures, Dempster-Shafer belief functions, plausibility measures, etc. Our similarity measures for temporal logics and automata can possibly be categorized under plausibility measures and they are quite different from probability measures. The book @cite_21 also describes logics for reasoning about uncertainty. Also, probabilistic versions of Propositional Dynamic Logics were presented in @cite_25 . However, these works do not consider logics and formalisms on sequences, and do not use the various vector distance measures considered in this paper.
@cite_21 @cite_25
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Different formalisms for solving problems of inference under uncertainty have been developed so far. The most popular numerical approach is the theory of Bayesian inference [Lauritzen and Spiegelhalter, 1988]. More general approaches are the Dempster-Shafer theory of evidence [Shafer, 1976], and possibility theory [Dubois and Prade, 1990], which is closely related to fuzzy systems. For these systems computer implementations are available. In competition with these numerical methods are different symbolic approaches. Many of them are based on different types of non-monotonic logic. This thesis presents a logical formalism for representing and reasoning with probabilistic knowledge. The formalism differs from previous efforts in this area in a number of ways. Most previous work has investigated ways of assigning probabilities to the sentences of a logical language. Such an assignment fails to capture an important class of probabilistic assertions, empirical generalizations. Such generalizations are particularly important for AI, since they can be accumulated through experience with the world. Thus, they offer the possibility of reasoning in very general domains, domains where no experts are available to gather subjective probabilities from. A logic is developed which can represent these empirical generalizations. Reasoning can be performed through a proof theory which is shown to be sound and complete. Furthermore, the logic can represent and reason with a very general set of assertions, including many non-numeric assertions. This also is important for AI as numbers are usually not available. The logic makes it clear that there is an essential difference between empirical, or statistical, probabilities and probabilities assigned to sentences, e.g., subjective probabilities. The second part of the formalism is an inductive mechanism for assigning degrees of belief to sentences based on the empirical generalizations expressed in the logic. these degrees of belief have a strong advantage over subjective probabilities: they are founded on objective statistical knowledge about the world. Furthermore, the mechanism of assigning degrees of belief gives a natural answer to the question "Where do the probabilities come from:" they come from our experience with the world. The two parts of the formalism offer combined, interacting, but still clearly separated, plausible inductive inference and sound deductive inference. In this paper we compare the expressive power of elementary representation formats for vague, incomplete or conflicting information. These include Boolean valuation pairs introduced by Lawry and Gonzalez-Rodriguez, orthopairs of sets of variables, Boolean possibility and necessity measures, three-valued valuations, supervaluations. We make explicit their connections with strong Kleene logic and with Belnap logic of conflicting information. The formal similarities between 3-valued approaches to vagueness and formalisms that handle incomplete information often lead to a confusion between degrees of truth and degrees of uncertainty. Yet there are important differences that appear at the interpretive level: while truth-functional logics of vagueness are accepted by a part of the scientific community (even if questioned by supervaluationists), the truth-functionality assumption of three-valued calculi for handling incomplete information looks questionable, compared to the non-truth-functional approaches based on Boolean possibility-necessity pairs. This paper aims to clarify the similarities and differences between the two situations. We also study to what extent operations for comparing and merging information items in the form of orthopairs can be expressed by means of operations on valuation pairs, three-valued valuations and underlying possibility distributions. We explore the connections between several representations of imperfect information.In each case we compare the expressive power of these formalisms.In each case we study how to express aggregation operations.We demonstrate the formal similarities among these approaches.We point out the differences in interpretations between these approaches. In order to deal with uncertainty intelligently, we need to be able to represent it and reason about it. In this book, Joseph Halpern examines formal ways of representing uncertainty and considers various logics for reasoning about it. While the ideas presented are formalized in terms of definitions and theorems, the emphasis is on the philosophy of representing and reasoning about uncertainty. Halpern surveys possible formal systems for representing uncertainty, including probability measures, possibility measures, and plausibility measures; considers the updating of beliefs based on changing information and the relation to Bayes' theorem; and discusses qualitative, quantitative, and plausibilistic Bayesian networks. This second edition has been updated to reflect Halpern's recent research. New material includes a consideration of weighted probability measures and how they can be used in decision making; analyses of the Doomsday argument and the Sleeping Beauty problem; modeling games with imperfect recall using the runs-and-systems approach; a discussion of complexity-theoretic considerations; the application of first-order conditional logic to security. Reasoning about Uncertainty is accessible and relevant to researchers and students in many fields, including computer science, artificial intelligence, economics (particularly game theory), mathematics, philosophy, and statistics.