Deep Transfer as Structure Learning in Markov Logic Networks

Learning the relational structure of a domain is a fundamental problem in statistical relational learning. The deep transfer algorithm of Davis and Domingos attempts to improve structure learning in Markov logic networks by harnessing the power of transfer learning, using the second-order structural regularities of a source domain to bias the structure search process in a target domain. We propose that the clique-scoring process which discovers these second-order regularities constitutes a novel standalone method for learning the structure of Markov logic networks, and that this fact, rather than the transfer of structural knowledge across domains, accounts for much of the performance benefit observed via the deep transfer process. This claim is supported by experiments in which we find that clique scoring within a single domain often produces results equaling or surpassing the performance of deep transfer incorporating external knowledge, and also by explicit algorithmic similarities between deep transfer and other structure learning techniques.