Exact learning of tree patterns from queries and counterexamples

Abstract

We consider learning tree patterns from queries. The instances are ordered and unordered trees with nodes labeled by constant identifiers. The concepts are tree patterns and unions of tree patterns (forests) where all the internal nodes are labeled with constants and the leaves are labeled with constants or variables. A tree pattern matches any tree with its variables replaced with constant subtrees. We show that ordered trees, in which the children are matched in a strict left-to-right order, are exactly learnable from equivalence queries, while ordered forests are learnable from equivalence and membership queries. Unordered trees are exactly learnable from superset queries, and unordered forests are learnable from superset and equivalence queries. Negatively, we also show that each of the query types used is necessary for learning each concept class.