Dynamically Adjusting Categories to Accommodate Changing Contexts

Abstract

Concept formation is the process by which generaliza-tions are formed through observation of instances from the environment. These instances are described along a number of attributes, which are selected according to their relevance to the problem or task for which the concepts will be used. The context of a concept learning problem consists of the goals and tasks of the learner, as well as its background knowledge and do-main theories and the external environment in which it operates. Context is essential to inductive concept learning for it determines which attributes to use for a given problem out of the infinitely many available, providing a bias for the learner (Mitchell, 1980). Fur-thermore, context is not a static entity, but is con-stantly changing, especially in the types of learning