Latex Maths

Saturday, July 23, 2011

Distributive agents, illustrated

The following illustrates how deduction (backward-chaining) is performed.  Forward-chaining works very similarly.  I have left out how the agents find others to answer queries -- this is the routing strategy which is an optimization problem.

Agent2 performs only one step, namely, the resolution of:
  • P\/Q (the query Agent2 is being asked)
    with
  • ~P\/Q (the rule that Agent2 has in its KB)



This is another illustration, using a common-sense example:


By the way, the implication statement "A implies B":
     nice(X) ← sandals(X)
is classically equivalent to "not A or B":
     ~sandals(X) \/ nice(X)
and therefore it can be resolved with
    nice(matt)
by the substitution { X / matt }, yielding the resolvent:
    sandals(matt).
This is why the resolution step works.