Generating corrective explanations for interactive constraint satisfaction

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingsConference proceedingpeer-review

Abstract

Interactive tasks such as online configuration and e-commerce can be modelled as constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs). These can be solved interactively by a user assigning values to variables. The user may require advice and explanations from a system to help him/her find a satisfactory solution. Explanations of failure in constraint programming tend to focus on conflict. However, what is really desirable is an explanation that is corrective in the sense that it provides the basis for moving forward in the problem-solving process, More specifically, when faced with a dead-end, or when a desirable value has been removed from a domain, we need to compute alternative assignments for a subset of the assigned variables that enables the user to move forward. This paper defines this notion of corrective explanation, and proposes an algorithm to generate such explanations. The approach is shown to perform well on both real-world configuration benchmarks and randomly generated problems.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Pages445-459
Number of pages15
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2005
Event11th International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming - CP 2005 - Sitges, Spain
Duration: 1 Oct 20055 Oct 2005

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume3709 LNCS
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Conference

Conference11th International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming - CP 2005
Country/TerritorySpain
CitySitges
Period1/10/055/10/05

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Generating corrective explanations for interactive constraint satisfaction'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this