Two papers are of general interest and survey hybrid approaches, at least in part:

Fisher, D., & Pazzani, M. (1991). "Theory-Guided Concept Formation," in Fisher, D., Pazzani, M., & Langley, P. (eds.), Concept Formation: Experience and Knowledge in Unsupervised Learning. San Mateo, CA: Morgan Kaufmann, 165--178.

Fisher, D., Subramanian, D., & Tadepalli, P. (1992). "An overview of current research on knowledge compilation and speedup learning." Workshop on Knowledge Compilation and Speedup Learning, Aberdeen, UK.

Three lines of research into empirical/analytic hybrids are outlined below.


One line of research culminated in the EXOR system, described from both psychological and computational perspectives, in:

Fisher, D., & Yoo, J. (1993). "Problem solving, categorization, and concept learning: A unifying view," in G. Nakamura, R. Taraban, & D. Medin (eds.), The Psychology of Learning and Motivation, 29, San Diego, CA: Academic Press, 219--255.

Earlier writeups, almost entirely from a computational perspective, include:

Yoo, J., & Fisher, D. (1991). "Concept Formation over Problem-Solving Experience," in Fisher, D., Pazzani, M., & Langley, P. (eds.), Concept Formation: Experience and Knowledge in Unsupervised Learning. San Mateo, CA: Morgan Kaufmann, 279--306.

Yoo, J., & Fisher, D. (1991). "Concept formation over explanations and problem-solving experiences" Proceedings of the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Sydney, Australia: Morgan Kaufmann, 630--636.

Yoo, J., & Fisher, D. (1989). "Conceptual Clustering of Explanations," Sixth International Machine Learning Workshop, Ithaca, NY: Morgan Kaufmann.

Fisher, D., & Yoo, J. (1991). "Combining evidence from deep and surface features" Proceedings of the International Workshop on Machine Learning, Chicago, IL: Morgan Kaufmann.

Yoo, J., & Fisher, D. (1991). "Identifying cost-effective boundaries of operationality" Proceedings of the International Workshop on Machine Learning, Chicago, IL: Morgan Kaufmann.

Fisher D., Yang, H., & Yoo, J. (1990). "Case-Based and Abstraction-Based Reasoning" AAAI Symposium on Case-Based Reasoning, Palo Alto, CA: AAAI Press.

Fisher, D., Manganaris, S., & Yoo, J. (1992). "Clustering Approaches to Speedup Learning," Workshop on Knowledge Compilation and Speedup Learning, Aberdeen, UK.

Fisher, D., Carnes, R., Yang, H., & Yoo, J. (1992). "Basic Levels of Problem Solving and Related Phenomena," AAAI Workshop on Approximations and Abstractions, San Jose, CA.


A related line of research looked at facilitating efficient reuse and adaptation of means-ends plans through clustering. The gist of this research is well represented in this technical report and culminated in Hua Yang's dissertation (1992).

Yang, H., & Fisher, D. (1989). "Conceptual Clustering of Means-Ends Plans," Sixth International Machine Learning Workshop, Ithaca, NY: Morgan Kaufmann.

Yang, H., Franke, H., & Fisher D. (1990). "Planning, Replanning, and Learning with an Abstraction Hierarchy" AAAI Symposium on Planning in Uncertain Environments, Palo Alto, CA: AAAI Press.

Yang, H., Fisher D., & Franke, H. (1990). "Improving Planning Efficiency by Conceptual Clustering" Third International Conference on Industrial and Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems, ACM Press.

Yang, H., & Fisher, D. (1993). "Planning Speedup by Learning, Reusing, and Patching Macro Operators," Third International Workshop on Knowledge Compilation and Speedup Learning, Amherst, MA.


A third separate line of research culminated in Julio Ortega's dissertation (1995) and in the IJCAI paper below. One theme in this research was to loosely couple induction and domain theory, emphasis on loosely, so that off the shelf systems could be adapted (e.g., domain theories serve to augment data description over which induction occurs). Also so the technical report by Ortega.

Ortega, J., & Fisher, D. (1995). "Flexibly exploiting prior knowledge in empirical learning" Proceedings of the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, (pp. 1041--1047). Montreal, Canada: AAAI Press.

Fisher, D., Ortega, J., & Gallaher, M. (1993). "Induction over All: A Hybrid Approach to Speedup Learning," Third International Workshop on Knowledge Compilation and Speedup Learning, Amherst, MA.

Ortega, J., & Fisher, D. (1993). "Inductive Speedup Learning Revisited with FOIL," Third International Workshop on Knowledge Compilation and Speedup Learning, Amherst, MA.


Douglas H. Fisher