1. A Quick Romp Through Probabilistic Relational Models
Teg Grenager
NLP Lunch
February 13, 2003

2. Agenda Bayesian Networks Probabilistic Relational Models Learning PRMs
Expressivity
Applications to NLP

3. Agenda Bayesian Networks Probabilistic Relational Models Learning PRMs
Expressivity
Applications to NLP

4. Propositional Logic
Ontological commitment: the world consists of propositions, or facts, which are either true or false: HighPaperRating
Set of 2n possible worlds – one for each truth assignment to the n propositions
Propositional logic allows us to compactly represent restrictions on possible worlds:
If HighPublicationRating then HighPaperRating
Means that we have eliminated the possible worlds where HighPublicationRating is true but HighPaperRating is false.

5. Propositional Uncertainty
To model uncertainty we would like to represent a probability distribution over possible worlds.
To represent the full joint distribution we would need 2n-1parameters (infeasible)
Insight: the value of most propositions isn't affected by the value of most other propositions!
More formally, some propositions are conditionally independent of each other given the value of other propositions

6. Bayesian Networks
We use a directed acyclic graph to encode these independence assumptions
This model encodes the assumption that each variable is independent of its non-descendents given its parents
AuthorInstitution
JournalRating
AuthorRating
PaperRating
PaperCited

7. Factorization
If a BN encodes the true independence assumptions of a distribution, we can use a factored representation for the distribution:
To specify the full joint we need only the conditional probabilities of a variable given its parents

8. Bayesian Networks
AuthorInstitution
P(AI=Stanford)
0.01
JournalRating
P(JR=high)
0.3 AI JR
P(PR=high | AI, JR)
Stanf.
high
0.6
low
0.1
other
0.2
0.01 AI
P(AR=high | AI)
Stanf.
0.1
other
0.001
AuthorRating
PaperRating PR
P(PC=true | PR)
high
0.5
low
0.01
PaperCited
The full joint over these five binary variables would need 25-1=31 parameters, but this factored representation only needs 10!

9. Inference in Bayes Nets
Query types (given evidence z):
Conditional probability query: what is the probability distribution over the values of subset y?
Most probable explanation query: what is the most likely assignment of values to all remaining variables x-z?
Maximum a posteriori query: what is the most likely assignment of values to subset y?
Worst case, inference is NP-hard
In practice, much easier

10. Variable Elimination AuthorInstitution JournalRating AuthorRating
PaperRating
PaperCited

11. Learning Bayes Nets
We want to learn a BN from a dataset D that consists of m tuples, each of the form x(m), specifying the value of all variables xi
Two problems:
Given a graphical model G, estimate the the conditional probability distribution at each node (parameter estimation)
Select the best graphical model (structure learning)

12. Parameter Estimation
Note that we can decompose this and estimate the parameters separately:
Can also take a Bayesian approach

13. Structure Learning Hypothesis space:
Exponential number of possible structures over the variables
Scoring function (minimum description length or Bayesian) includes:
Likelihood of the structure given the data and the maximum likelihood parameters 
Description length of the graph and CPDs
Search algorithm:
Operators: add, delete, and reverse an edge
Greedy hill-climbing with random restart

14. Agenda Bayesian Networks Probabilistic Relational Models Learning PRMs
Expressivity
Applications to NLP

15. Bayes Net Shortcomings
BNs lack the concept of an object
Cannot represent general rules about the relations between multiple similar objects
For example, if we wanted to represent the probabilities over multiple papers, authors, and journals:
We would need an explicit random variable for each paper/author/journal
The distributions would be separate, so knowledge about one wouldn't impart any knowledge about the others

16. Relational Models
Relational models make a stronger ontological commitment: the world consists of objects, and relations over them
There are many possible relational models (more on this later)
PRMs are based on a particular “relational logic” borrowed from databases:
Databases
Relational Logic
Table
Class
Tuple
Object
Standard Field
Descriptive Attribute
Foreign Key Field
Reference Slot

17. Relational Schema We define a relational schema to consist of
A set of n classes X = {X1,…,Xn}
Given a class X, a set of attributes A(X)
Attribute A of class X is denoted X.A, and its space of values is denoted V(X.A)
Given a class X, a set of reference slots R(X)
Reference slot  of class X is denoted X., with domain type X and range type of some class Y
Each reference slot  has an inverse slot -1
A slot chain  is a sequence of slots 1,… k such that for all i, Range(i)=Domain(I+1)

18. Relational Model Example
Paper
Publication
Rating
Title
Author
Institution
Name
Authorship
Citation
From To
Paper
Proc. IJCAI
Publication 5
Rating
OOBNs
Title
Author
U. Maryland
Institution 3
D. Koller
Name
Proc. UAI
L. Getoor
Learning in PRMs
Authorship
Learning in PRMs
Paper
D. Koller
Author
L. Getoor
Citation
From
OOBNs To

19. Modeling Uncertainty Given a schema, a possible world specifies:
A set of objects in each class
An assignment of objects to reference slots
An assignment of values to attributes
The set of possible worlds is infinite, hard to define a distribution over
Thus a PRM only specifies a distribution over the possible assignment of values to attributes given a set of ground objects and the relations between them

20. Modeling Uncertainty More formally, we define:
A relational skeleton, , to be a set of objects and relations between them (defined as reference slot values)
An instance, , to be an assignment of values to attributes
A PRM defines a probability distribution over possible completions  of a skeleton 
Let x.A be the value of x.A in instance 

21. Relational Model Example
Author
Author
Name
Name
D. Koller
Institution
Author
Institution
U. Maryland
Rating
Name
L. Getoor
Rating 3
Authorship
Institution
Authorship
Author
D. Koller
Rating
Authorship
Author
Paper
Learning in PRMs
Author
D. Koller
Paper
Authorship
Paper
Paper
Learning in PRMs
Paper
Author
L. Getoor
Title
OOBNs
Title
Publication
Paper
Paper
Learning in PRMs
Proc. IJCAI
Publication
Title
Learning in PRMs
Rating 5
Rating
Publication
Proc. IJCAI
Rating
Citation
Publication To
OOBNs
Name
Publication
From
Learning in PRMs
Rating
Name
Proc. UAI
Publication
Rating 3
Citation
Name
Proc. IJCAI To
Rating
From

22. PRM Dependency Structure
PRMs assume that the attribute values of objects are each influenced by only a few other attribute values (as in a BN)
Thus we associate with each attribute X.A a set of parents Pa(X.A)
These are formal parents; they will be instantiated differently for different objects
These sets of parents (one for each attribute) define the dependency structure S of the PRM

23. Types of Parents We define two types of parents for X.A:
Another attribute X.B of the same class X
E.g., Author.Rating could depend on Author.Institution
An attribute of a related object X..B where  is a slot chain
E.g., Paper.Rating could depend on Paper.Publication.Rating

24. Relational Model Example
Paper
Publication
Rating
Title
Author
Institution
Name
Authorship
Citation
From To
Proc. IJCAI 5
OOBNs
U. Maryland 3
D. Koller
Learning in PRMs
Proc. UAI
L. Getoor

25. Multisets as Parents But what if X..B points to more than one value?
E.g., Paper.Authorship.Author.Rating points to the ratings of all coauthors of the paper
We define an aggregate function, , to map from a multiset of attributes to a summary value (e.g., sum, mean, max, cardinality)
We allow X.A to have as a parent (X..B)
E.g., Paper.Rating depends on mean(Paper.Authorship.Author.Rating)

26. Relational Model Example
Paper
Publication
Rating
Title
Author
Institution
Name
Authorship
Citation
From To
Proc. IJCAI
OOBNs
D. Koller
Learning in PRMs
Proc. UAI
L. Getoor
mean

27. PRM Parameters
As in a BN, for each attribute we define a conditional probability distribution (CPD) over the values of the attribute given the values of the parents
More precisely, let U = Pa(X.A) be the set of parents, V(U) be the possible values of U, and uV(U) be some tuple of of values
Then we can define a distribution P(X.A|u) parameterized by X.A|u
Let S be the union of all X.A|u

28. Joint Probability Distribution
Now we can use the following factored representation for the joint probability distribution over possible instances  consistent with skeleton  :
Where O(X) denotes the set of objects in skeleton  whose class is X

29. Acyclicity
Problem: Distribution is not coherent when dependency structure S has cycles
Naïve approach: Require acyclic class dependency graph
This would prohibit a dependency of the genotype of a person (child) on the genotype of a person (parent), even though it is clearly acyclic
Better: require certain guaranteed acyclic slots
The parent slot above is guaranteed acyclic
Graph coloring algorithm for checking legality of dependency structures

30. Structural Uncertainty
Reference Uncertainty
Uncertainty over values of reference slots R(X) for each object in class X (but range is given)
Naïve approach: if range of X. has range Y, use distribution over all objects O(Y)
Too large, not general
Better: use a partition over objects O(Y)
Base partition on a subset of attributes Partition[]  A(Y)
Create a selector attribute S which takes a value in the space of values V(Partition[])
Define parents and a CPD for S

31. Structural Uncertainty (2)
Existence Uncertainty
Uncertainty over number of objects in a class
Distinguish between determined and undetermined classes
Undetermined classes are typically those representing many-many relations like Citation
Place distribution over objects in undetermined classes
Consider all “possible” objects in class
Create special existence attribute X.E whose values V(E) = {true, false}
Define parents and a CPD for X.E

32. Inference in PRMs
Given a skeleton (set of objects and relations), a PRM defines a distribution over possible instances (assignments of values to attributes)
Same query types as in BNs
To answer queries, we compile the PRM to its associated BN, and use BN inference as described earlier (that’s it!)

33. Agenda Bayesian Networks Probabilistic Relational Models Learning PRMs
Expressivity
Applications to NLP

34. Learning PRMs
Training set consists of a fully specified instance: a set of objects, the relations between them, and the values of all attributes
In other words, a database!
As in BNs, we split into two problems:
Given a dependency structure S, estimate the the conditional probability distribution at each node (parameter estimation)
Select the best dependency structure (structure learning)

35. Parameter Estimation
We do maximum likelihood estimation for the BN induced by the structure given the skeleton
Parameters are tied for nodes of same class
As in BNs, the likelihood function can be decomposed and learned separately
As in BNs, can also take a Bayesian approach

36. Structure Learning We need a hypothesis space:
A hypothesis is a dependency structure, specifying parents for each attribute X.A.
Hypothesis space is infinite because the length of the slot chain leading to the parent attribute is unbounded
No problem, we let the search algorithm decide how long to make slot chains
We must ensure that the dependency structures we learn is acyclic
No problem, just test each dependency structure before we consider it

37. Structure Learning (2)
We need a scoring function to evaluate the "goodness" of each candidate hypothesis:
We use Bayesian model selection, where the score of a structure S is defined as the posterior probability of the structure given the data :
The second component of the score P(S|) = P(S) is a prior over structures
To penalize length of slot chains we set logP(S) to be proportional to the total length of the chains in S

38. Structure Learning (3)
The first component of the score is the marginal likelihood:
If we use a parameter independent Dirichlet prior (over parameters), this integral decomposes into a product of integrals each of which has a simple closed form solution
E.g., uniform Dirichlet prior over parameters
Asymptotically equivalent to explicit penalization, such as the MDL score

39. Structure Learning (4) Finally we need a search algorithm:
Greedy hill-climbing with random restart? Problems:
Infinitely many possible structures
Process of computing sufficient statistics at each search step requires expensive database joins
Heuristic search:
Series of phases. At phase k we identify a set of potential parents Potk(X.A) for each attribute X.A
We do standard structure search restricted to space of structures in which each attribute X.A has parents in Potk(X.A)
Allows us to precompute database views

40. Agenda Bayesian Networks Probabilistic Relational Models Learning PRMs
Expressivity
Applications to NLP

41. Relational Models
The most general relational model: the world consists of objects and relations over them
First order logic is perhaps the most basic relational setting:
Syntax
Constants and quantified variables (representing objects)
Predicates (representing relations), stated in terms of constants and variables, composed with logical connectives
Semantics:
Set of possible worlds, one for each possible extent of each relation

42. Relational Models Different relational paradigms:
First-order logic (from math, phil)
Relational algebra (from DB)
Entity/Relation models (from DB)
Frame-relational systems (from KR)
How do they relate to each other?
FOL makes the fewest assumptions
E/R models add classes (of objects), attributes (of objects), and typed relations
FRS add class hierarchies
FOL can represent E/R, FRS (of course)
E/R, FRS can represent FOL (awkwardly)

43. Relational Models
PRMs as currently defined cannot represent uncertainty in general FOL
Cannot represent uncertainty about whether or not a relation exists between a given tuple of objects
Even when we add “structural uncertainty” as proposed PRMs are too specialized
The probability of a relation between objects would conditioned on the values of some of their attributes, not on their participation in other relations

44. Alternative Models
Taskar, Abbeel, Koller. Discriminative Probabilistic Models for Relational Data. UAI 2002.
Muggleton, S. Stochastic logic programs. Journal of Logic Programming
Kersting, K. and De Raedt, L. Bayesian logic programs. Work-in-progress Track at the 10th International Conference on ILP
Poole, D. Probabilistic Horn abduction and Bayesian networks.
Halpern, J. An analysis of first-order logics of probability

45. Agenda Bayesian Networks Probabilistic Relational Models Learning PRMs
Expressivity
Applications to NLP

46. Applications to NLP
Can use it anywhere you want to have parameter tying
E.g., Naïve Bayes can be represented by PRM
Two classes: Document and Feature
A(Document) = {Document.Class}
A(Feature) = {Feature.Value}
R(Feature) = {Feature.Document}
Dependency structure:
Feature.Value depends on Feature.Document.Class

47. Relational Classification
Hypertext classification, using text and links
Previously, iterative labeling algorithms that reassigns labels based on neighbors labels
PRMs with “existence uncertainty” provide unified framework for links and text
Classes: Page, Anchor, Link (undetermined)
A(Page) = {Category, Hub, Word1,…Wordn}
A(Link) = {Exists}, V(Link) = {From-Page, To-Page}
A(Anchor) = {Word}, V(Anchor) = {In-Link}
Learn PRM using Bayesian parameter est.
Predict using belief propagation

48. Relational Clustering
Clustering in a relational domain: e.g., Papers and Citations
They use multi-valued reference slots
Classes: Paper, Author
A(Paper) = {Class, Word1,…,Wordn}
V(Author) = {Cited, Wrote}
A(Author) = {Class}
Dependency structure has aggregation ops
Pa(Paper.Class) = {Stoch-Mode(Wrote.Class), Stoch-Mode(Cited.Class)}
Pa(Paper.Wordi) = {Paper.Class}
Learn with EM, using belief prop for E-step

49. Database Optimization
Estimating the size of complex queries
Previous approaches assume:
Attribute independence
Join uniformity (prob of two tuples joining is uniform
But PRMs provide compact representation of joint probability distribution over attributes
Represent skew in the join probabilities between tuples
Represent correlation between attributes of tuples joined via foreign-key.

50. Other Applications
Modeling gene expression data…

51. My Ideas
Probabilistic context free grammars are relational and probabilistic, but they are not representable by PRMs w/o struct. uncert.
Class for each non-terminal
Object for each instance of a non-terminal (bound to a particular subtree)
One attribute for each non-terminal, the rewrite rule, which has multiple values
Problems:
We want to represent the probability of objects occuring (?!) and the probability of relations between objects (?!)

52. My Ideas
I was hoping that they could be used as semantic representation for natural language
E.g., after syntactic and semantic parsing an utterance I update my PRM to represent a new distribution over my objects, attributes, and relations
This would only work if I was representing uncertainty only about attribute values and influences of some attributes on others
Ideas?

53. Bibliography
Friedman, N., Getoor, L., Koller, D., and Pfeffer, A. (1999) Learning Probabilistic Relational Models. In Relational Data Mining, Dzeroski and Lavrac, Editors, Springer-Verlag, 2001.
Friedman, N., Getoor, L., Koller, D., and Pfeffer, A. (1999) Learning Probabilistic Relational Models. IJCAI-99.
Koller, D., and Pfeffer, A. (1998) Probabilistic frame-based systems. AAAI-98.
Koller, D. and Friedman, N. (1997) Object-Oriented Bayesian Networks. UAI-97.

54. Relational Model Example
Author
Name
Institution
Rating
Author
Name
D. Koller
Institution
U. Maryland
Rating 3
Author
Name
L. Getoor
Institution
U. Maryland
Rating 5
Authorship
Author
D. Koller
Paper
Learning in PRMs
Authorship
Author
Paper
Authorship
Author
D. Koller
Paper
Learning in PRMs
Authorship
Author
L. Getoor
Paper
Learning in PRMs
Paper
Title
OOBNs
Publication
Proc. IJCAI
Rating 5
Paper
Title
Publication
Rating
Paper
Title
Learning in PRMs
Publication
Proc. IJCAI
Rating 5
Citation To
OOBNs
From
Learning in PRMs
Publication
Name
Rating
Publication
Name
Proc. UAI
Rating 3
Publication
Name
Proc. IJCAI
Rating 3
Citation To
From