Compilability of Abduction

TL;DR

This paper explores how preprocessing, or compilation, can potentially reduce the computational complexity of abduction, a key reasoning process used in practical applications like diagnosis.

Contribution

It provides complexity results demonstrating the impact of compilation on the computational difficulty of abduction problems.

Findings

Compilation can reduce the complexity of certain abduction problems

Preprocessing assumptions and theories can improve reasoning efficiency

Complexity results vary depending on problem restrictions

Abstract

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.