Graph-based induction as a unified learning framework

We describe a graph-based induction algorithm that extracts typical patterns from colored digraphs. The method is shown to be capable of solving a variety of learning problems by mapping the different learning problems into colored digraphs. The generality and scope of this method can be attributed to the expressiveness of the colored digraph representation, which allows a number of different learning problems to be solved by a single algorithm. We demonstrate the application of our method to two seemingly different learning tasks: inductive learning of classification rules, and learning macro rules for speeding up inference. We also show that the uniform treatment of these two learning tasks enables our method to solve complex learning problems such as the construction of hierarchical knowledge bases.