Tools for Statistical Relation Learning¶

Overview¶

After the installation, all of these tools will be located in the /path/to/pracmln/apps directory (which, if you’ve set up your environment correctly, is within your system PATH).

Markov Logic Networks¶

mlnquery - the MLN Query-Tool, a graphical inference tool
mlnlearn - the MLN-Learning-Tool, a graphical learning tool

Evaluation¶

Command-line tools (invoke for usage instructions): * xval - tool for conducting automated cross-validation with MLNs.

Graphical Tools and Editors¶

Two graphical tools, whose usage is hopefully self-explanatory, are part of the package: There’s an inference tool (mlnquery.py) and a parameter learning tool (mlnlearn.py). Simply invoke them using the Python interpreter. (On Windows, do not use pythonw.exe to run them because the console output is an integral part of these tools.):

mlnquery
mlnlearn

General Usage¶

Both tools work with .mln and .db files in a pracmln project file. A project file is a container in the zip format that has the file extension .pracmln. The structure of the container is as follows

project-name.pracmln
    query.conf
    learn.conf
    mlns/
       ...
    dbs/
       ...

It consists of two .conf files that hold the settings of your inferences and learning procedures (e.g. which algorithms to use with wich parameters). All .mln files that can be used within the project must go into the mlns subdirectory, whereas all .db files must be located in the dbs directory.

By default, all output files will also be written to the current project container.

The tools are designed to be invoked from a console. Simply change to the directory in which the files you want to work with are located and then invoke the tool you want to use, e.g.

$ mlnquery

The tool will remember this directory for the next session and will automatically start in that directory. The memorized directory from the last session can be overridden by a command-line argument, so

$ mlnquery .

will always start in current working directory regardless of the directory of the previous session.

The general workflow is then as follows: You select the files you want to work with, edit them as needed or even create new files directly from within the GUI. Then you set the further options (e.g. the number of inference steps to take) and click on the button at the very bottom to start the procedure.

Once you start the actual algorithm, the tool window itself will be hidden as long as the job is running, while the output of the algorithm is written to the console for you to follow. At the beginning, the tools list the main input parameters for your convenience, and, once the task is completed, the query tool additionally outputs the inference results to the console.

MLN Project Paths¶

Files located in a .pracmln project can be accessed my means of the pracmln.mlnpath class. An MLN Path has the following form:

<path-to-project>:<file-in-project>

where <path-to-project> is a regular relative or absolute file path to a .pracmln project file and <file-in-project> is the name of the file in the project. For example, consider that there is a project file my-project.pracmln in the user’s home directory and we wish to access the file learnt.mln within that project. Then, this file can be accessed by the line

from pracmln.utils.project import mlnpath
p = mlnpath('/home/nyga/my-project.pracmln:learnt.mln')
print p.content

mlnpath returns an object of the type pracmln.mlnpath, which has the following members:

class pracmln.mlnpath(path)¶

Loads the MLN resource content from a location.

A location can be a regular absolute or relative path to an .mln file. It may also refer to an MLN inside a .pracmln project container. In the latter case, the .mln file name needs to be separated from the .pracmln project location by a colon. Path specification may also contain references to system environment variables, which are referred to of the form ${var}.

Example

>>> mlnpath('~/mlns/classification.pracmln:model-1.mln').content
...

content¶: Returns the content of the file specified by this mlnpath.

exists¶: Checks if the file exists.

file¶: Returns the name of the file specified by this mlnpath.

project¶: Returns the project name specified.

projectloc¶: Returns the location of the project file, if any is specified.

Integrated Editors¶

For every learning/inference task, you must specify which MLN syntax and logic calculus is to be used:

Selection of the MLN syntax (grammar) and logic calculus.¶

The dropdown menus in the MLN and DB sections of the GUIs display all MLN or DB files in the project. In order to inspect or edit a file, just select them from the respective dropdown menu:

File selection in the GUI tools.¶

If you modify a file, it will be flagged as “dirty”, which is indicated by an asterisk in front of its file name. New, empty files can be added to the project by hitting the “New” button, existing files can be imported from the file system via the “Import…” button. Files can also be renamed by editing their file name in the text box and hitting the “Save” button or removed from the project with “Delete”.

The tools feature integrated editors for .db and .mln files. If you modify a file in an internal editor, it will automatically be saved as soon as you invoke the learning or inference method (i.e. when you press the button at the very bottom) or whenever you press the save button to the right of the dropdown menu. If you want to save to a different filename, you may do so by changing the filename in the text input directly below the editor (which is activated as soon as the editor content changes) and then clicking on the save button. Session Management

The tools will save all the settings you made and all files when you hit the “save project” button. So that you can easily resume a session (all the information is saved to a configuration file). Moreover, the query tool will save context-specific information:

Note

The query tool remembers the query you last made for each evidence database, so when you reselect a database, the query you last made with that database is automatically restored. The model extension that you selected is also associated with the training database (because model extensions typically serve to augment the evidence, e.g. the specification of additional formulas to specify virtual evidence). The additional parameters you specify are saved specific to the inference engine.

Parameters¶

There are a couple parameters that both the query tool and the learning tool have in common, which can be set with the respective checkboxes:

use all CPUs will pass a parameter instructing all algorithms to distribute computation tasks over all CPUs available on the machine where possible. This parameter will be mapped to the multicore=True argument for algorithms.
use Profiler will automatically start the learning or inference in the python profiler and display runtime information after the algorithms have finished. This is useful for code optimization if you intend to implement your own learning or reasoning methods.
verbose will tell the algorithms to display nicely formatted progress information during runtime, a summary of all parameters passed to the algorithms, the final learnt model or nicely formatted inference results.
Add. params Additional parameters to pass to the inference or learning method. For every method, you can specify a comma-separated list of assignments of parameters of the infer method you are calling. For example, with debug='DEBUG' one can set the internal log level to DEBUG.

For a more detailed overview of the parameters, see Inference Methods and Learning Methods.