PRISM: A Programming Language for Symbolic-Statistical Modeling
English Name of The Software
PRISM (PRogramming In Statistical Modeling)
Software Features
This software system, PRISM, is an innovative logic programming
system which integrates learning and computation in a single
framework. PRISM contains two sub-systems, just as a human being has
arteries and veins in the body.
The execution sub-system carries out a program based on the semantics that unifies logic programs and probability theory. The learning sub-system learns distribution parameters buried in a PRISM program.
Actually, a PRISM program is a logic program whose facts have distribution parameters. We can learn various probabilities of derived goals by executing the program. We can also make the program learn appropriate parameter values from good examples by running the learning routine so that it behaves as we desire.
To deeply understand the behavior of PRISM programs probably requires
some learning efforts. However, PRISM programs may look just like a
Prolog program with a couple of new built-in predicates.
Accordingly, we expect PRISM programming to be not very difficult
for anyone who has some familiarity with Prolog.
Required Environment
We examined the PRISM system in the following environment:
www-admin@icot.or.jp