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Paolo Liberatore

Publications and source records attributed to Paolo Liberatore.

30 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

Raising a Hardness Result

This article presents a technique for proving problems hard for classes of the polynomial hierarchy or for PSPACE. The rationale of this technique is that some problem restrictions are able to simulate existential or universal quantifiers. If this is the case, reductions from Quantified Boolean Formulae (QBF) to these restrictions can be transformed into reductions from QBFs having one more quantifier in the front. This means that a proof of hardness of a problem at level n in the polynomial hierarchy can be split into n separate proofs, which may be simpler than a proof directly showing a reduction from a class of QBFs to the considered problem.

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Bijective Faithful Translations among Default Logics

In this article, we study translations between variants of defaults logics such that the extensions of the theories that are the input and the output of the translation are in a bijective correspondence. We assume that a translation can introduce new variables and that the result of translating a theory can either be produced in time polynomial in the size of the theory or its output is polynomial in that size; we however restrict to the case in which the original theory has extensions. This study fills a gap between two previous pieces of work, one studying bijective translations among restrictions of default logics, and the other one studying non-bijective translations between default logics variants.

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Redundancy in Logic II: 2CNF and Horn Propositional Formulae

We report complexity results about redundancy of formulae in 2CNF form. We first consider the problem of checking redundancy and show some algorithms that are slightly better than the trivial one. We then analyze problems related to finding irredundant equivalent subsets (I.E.S.) of a given set. The concept of cyclicity proved to be relevant to the complexity of these problems. Some results about Horn formulae are also shown.

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Complexity Issues in Finding Succinct Solutions of PSPACE-Complete Problems

We study the problem of deciding whether some PSPACE-complete problems have models of bounded size. Contrary to problems in NP, models of PSPACE-complete problems may be exponentially large. However, such models may take polynomial space in a succinct representation. For example, the models of a QBF are explicitely represented by and-or trees (which are always of exponential size) but can be succinctely represented by circuits (which can be polynomial or exponential). We investigate the complexity of deciding the existence of such succinct models when a bound on size is given.

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On the Complexity of Case-Based Planning

We analyze the computational complexity of problems related to case-based planning: planning when a plan for a similar instance is known, and planning from a library of plans. We prove that planning from a single case has the same complexity than generative planning (i.e., planning "from scratch"); using an extended definition of cases, complexity is reduced if the domain stored in the case is similar to the one to search plans for. Planning from a library of cases is shown to have the same complexity. In both cases, the complexity of planning remains, in the worst case, PSPACE-complete.

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Complexity Results on DPLL and Resolution

DPLL and resolution are two popular methods for solving the problem of propositional satisfiability. Rather than algorithms, they are families of algorithms, as their behavior depend on some choices they face during execution: DPLL depends on the choice of the literal to branch on; resolution depends on the choice of the pair of clauses to resolve at each step. The complexity of making the optimal choice is analyzed in this paper. Extending previous results, we prove that choosing the optimal literal to branch on in DPLL is Delta[log]^2-hard, and becomes NP^PP-hard if branching is only allowed on a subset of variables. Optimal choice in regular resolution is both NP-hard and CoNP-hard. The problem of determining the size of the optimal proofs is also analyzed: it is CoNP-hard for DPLL, and Delta[log]^2-hard if a conjecture we make is true. This problem is CoNP-hard for regular resolution.

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Where Fail-Safe Default Logics Fail

Reiter's original definition of default logic allows for the application of a default that contradicts a previously applied one. We call failure this condition. The possibility of generating failures has been in the past considered as a semantical problem, and variants have been proposed to solve it. We show that it is instead a computational feature that is needed to encode some domains into default logic.

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The Complexity of Modified Instances

In this paper we study the complexity of solving a problem when a solution of a similar instance is known. This problem is relevant whenever instances may change from time to time, and known solutions may not remain valid after the change. We consider two scenarios: in the first one, what is known is only a solution of the problem before the change; in the second case, we assume that some additional information, found during the search for this solution, is also known. In the first setting, the techniques from the theory of NP-completeness suffice to show complexity results. In the second case, negative results can only be proved using the techniques of compilability, and are often related to the size of considered changes.

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Merging Locally Correct Knowledge Bases: A Preliminary Report

Belief integration methods are often aimed at deriving a single and consistent knowledge base that retains as much as possible of the knowledge bases to integrate. The rationale behind this approach is the minimal change principle: the result of the integration process should differ as less as possible from the knowledge bases to integrate. We show that this principle can be reformulated in terms of a more general model of belief revision, based on the assumption that inconsistency is due to the mistakes the knowledge bases contain. Current belief revision strategies are based on a specific kind of mistakes, which however does not include all possible ones. Some alternative possibilities are discussed.

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Redundancy in Logic I: CNF Propositional Formulae

A knowledge base is redundant if it contains parts that can be inferred from the rest of it. We study the problem of checking whether a CNF formula (a set of clauses) is redundant, that is, it contains clauses that can be derived from the other ones. Any CNF formula can be made irredundant by deleting some of its clauses: what results is an irredundant equivalent subset (I.E.S.) We study the complexity of some related problems: verification, checking existence of a I.E.S. with a given size, checking necessary and possible presence of clauses in I.E.S.'s, and uniqueness. We also consider the problem of redundancy with different definitions of equivalence.

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Compilability of Abduction

Abduction is one of the most important forms of reasoning; it has been successfully applied to several practical problems such as diagnosis. In this paper we investigate whether the computational complexity of abduction can be reduced by an appropriate use of preprocessing. This is motivated by the fact that part of the data of the problem (namely, the set of all possible assumptions and the theory relating assumptions and manifestations) are often known before the rest of the problem. In this paper, we show some complexity results about abduction when compilation is allowed.

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