Learning by Analogy

This chapter discusses the process of learning by analogy. The chapter presents the following exercise that is an instance of the target of the analogy. In the particular case of analogy developed by Winston, the causal relations are the same in the base and in the target. In EX1 there is a particular man (man-1) and a particular woman (woman-1). The chapter discusses PROLOG implementation of Winston's learning by analogy method. It presents the hypothesis that EX1 is always more general than MA. This cannot be always the case as the base-story could well contain some general statements and the target-story some peculiarities. For instance, the target could contain the fact that the man is a prince, and the analogy should work exactly in the same way, which is not the case with the hypothesis. The noble of the base could not be recognized as an instance of the prince of the target, and the analogy would fail. To overcome this drawback, a unifier is used instead of a simple pattern-matcher.