Automated Prover For Attribute Dependencies In Data With Grades

We present a new axiomatization of logic for dependencies in data with grades, which includes ordinal data and data over domains with similarity relations, and an efficient reasoning method that is based on the axiomatization. The logic has its ordinary-style completeness characterizing the ordinary, bivalent entailment as well as the graded style completeness characterizing the general, possibly intermediate degrees of entailment. A core of the method is a new inference rule, called the rule of simplification, from which we derive convenient equivalences that allow us to simplify sets of dependencies while retaining semantic closure. The method makes it possible to compute a closure of a given collection of attributes with respect to a collection of dependencies, decide whether a given dependency is entailed by a given collection of dependencies, and more generally, compute the degree to which the dependency is entailed by a collection of dependencies. We also present an experimental evaluation of the presented method. (c) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.