Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
| Domain | Definition |
Computing | Cyc A large knowledge-based system. Cyc is a very large, multi-contextual knowledge base and inference engine, the development of which started at the Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation (MCC) in Austin, Texas during the early 1980s. Over the past eleven years the members of the Cyc team, lead by Doug Lenat, have added to the knowledge base a huge amount of fundamental human knowledge: facts, rules of thumb, and heuristics for reasoning about the objects and events of modern everyday life. Cyc is an attempt to do symbolic AI on a massive scale. It is not based on numerical methods such as statistical probabilities, nor is it based on neural networks or fuzzy logic. All of the knowledge in Cyc is represented declaratively in the form of logical assertions. Cyc presently contains approximately 400,000 significant assertions, which include simple statements of fact, rules about what conclusions to draw if certain statements of fact are satisfied, and rules about how to reason with certain types of facts and rules. The inference engine derives new conclusions using deductive reasoning. To date, Cyc has made possible ground-breaking pilot applications in the areas of heterogeneous database browsing and integration, captioned image retrieval, and natural language processing. In January of 1995, a new independent company named Cycorp was created to continue the Cyc project. Cycorp is still in Austin, Texas. The president of Cycorp is Doug Lenat. The development of Cyc has been supported by several organisations, including Apple, Bellcore, DEC, DoD, Interval, Kodak, and Microsoft. Home (http://www.cyc.com/). Unofficial FAQ (http://www.robotwisdom.com/ai/cycfaq.html). (1999-09-07). Source: The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
The project was started in 1984 by Doug Lenat. The name "Cyc" (from "encyclopedia", pronounced like psych) is a registered trademark owned by Cycorp, Inc in Austin, Texas, a company run by Lenat and devoted to the development of Cyc. The original project is proprietary, but a smaller version of the database has been released as OpenCyc under an open source license.
Typical pieces of knowledge represented in the database are "Every tree is a plant" and "Plants die eventually". When asked whether trees die, the inference engine can draw the obvious conclusion and answers the question correctly. The Knowledge Base (KB) contains over a million human-defined assertions, rules or common sense ideas. These are formulated in the language CycL, which is based on predicate calculus and has a syntax similar to the Lisp programming language.
Much of the current work on the Cyc project continues to be Knowledge Engineering, representing facts about the world by hand, and implementing efficient inference mechanisms on that knowledge. Increasingly, however, the thrust of work at Cycorp involves giving the Cyc system the ability to communicate with end users in natural language, and to assist with the Knowledge Formation process.
The concept names in Cyc are known as constants. Constants start with "#$" and are case-sensitive. There are constants for:
Sentences can also contain variables, strings starting with "?". One important rule asserted about the #$isa predicate reads
The knowledge base is divided into microtheories (Mt), collections of concepts and facts typically pertaining to one particular realm of knowledge. Unlike the knowledge base as a whole, each microtheory is required to be free from contradictions. Each microtheory has a name which is a regular constant; microtheory constants contain the string "Mt" by convention. An example is #$MathMt, the microtheory containing mathematical knowledge. The microtheories can inherit from each other and are organized in a hierarchy:
one specialization of #$MathMt is #$GeometryGMt, the microtheory about geometry.
The first version of OpenCyc was released in May 2001. The knowledge base contains about 6,000 concepts and 60,000 facts, has been combined with WordNet, is released under LGPL, and can be browsed online. The program which allows to browse and edit the database as well as to draw inferences is released for free, but only as a binary, without source code. It runs on Linux and Windows.
Description of the database, Terminology
The most important predicates are #$isa and #$genls. The first one describes that one item is an instance of some collection, the second one that one collection is a subcollection of another one. Facts about concepts are asserted using certain CycL sentences. Predicates are written before their arguments, in parentheses:
(#$isa #$BillClinton #$UnitedStatesPresident)
"Bill Clinton belongs to the collection of U.S. presidents" and
(#$genls #$Tree-ThePlant #$Plant)
"All trees are plants".
(#$capitalCity #$France #$Paris)
"Paris is the capital of France."(#$implies
(#$and
(#$isa ?OBJ ?SUBSET)
(#$genls ?SUBSET ?SUPERSET))
(#$isa ?OBJ ?SUPERSET))
with the interpretation "if OBJ is an instance of the collection SUBSET and SUBSET is a subcollection of SUPERSET, then OBJ is an instance of the collection SUPERSET". Another typical example is
(#$relationAllExists #$biologicalMother #$ChordataPhylum #$FemaleAnimal)
which means that for every instance of the collection #$ChordataPhylum (i.e. for every chordate), there exists a female animal (instance of #$FemaleAnimal) which is its mother (described by the predicate #$biologicalMother).OpenCyc
See also:
External Links
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Cyc."
| The following table is compiled from various sources, across various languages. When English abbreviations or acronyms come from a non-English source, this is noted. | |||
| Entry | Source | Expression | Field |
CYC | English | Company of Young Canadians | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |||
Crosswords: CYC |
| English words defined with "CYC": Bone Cave, Byzantine historians ♦ Hieratic character ♦ Lord of Misrule ♦ Merchant service ♦ Pigeon English, Polish draughts ♦ Scavenger's daughter, Shrove Tuesday. (references) |
| Specialty definitions using "CYC": Doug Lenat ♦ knowledge-based system. (references) |
| Domain | Usage | |
Movie/TV Titles | ||
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | ||
| "CYC" is generally used as a noun (proper) -- approximately 100.00% of the time. "CYC" is used about 5 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Noun (proper) | 100% | 5 | 157,705 |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Expression | Frequency per Day |
cyc raider | 112 |
cyc | 59 |
big cyc | 32 |
cyc louis st | 5 |
cyc net | 5 |
cyc engineering.com | 4 |
cyc seattle | 3 |
cyc engineering | 3 |
cog cyc | 2 |
cyc frzn.r08 | 2 |
basketball cyc | 2 |
camp cyc | 2 |
cyc realty | 2 |
big cyc dres | 2 |
cyc net.org | 2 |
central cyc south | 2 |
big cyc mp3 | 2 |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
Derivations | |
Words beginning with "CYC": cycad, cycadeoid, cycadeoids, cycadophyte, cycadophytes, cycads, cycas, cycases, cycasin, cycasins, cyclamate, cyclamates, cyclamen, cyclamens, cyclase, cyclases, cyclazocine, cyclazocines, cycle, cyclecar, cyclecars, cycled, cycler, cycleries, cyclers, cyclery, cycles, cyclic, cyclical, cyclicalities, cyclicality, cyclically, cyclicals, cyclicities, cyclicity, cyclicly, cycling, cyclings, cyclist, cyclists, cyclitol, cyclitols, cyclization, cyclizations, cyclize, cyclized, cyclizes, cyclizing, cyclo, cycloaddition, cycloadditions. (additional references) | |
Words containing "CYC": acyclic, acyclovir, acyclovirs, alicyclic, anticyclone, anticyclones, anticyclonic, bicycle, bicycled, bicycler, bicyclers, bicycles, bicyclic, bicycling, bicyclist, bicyclists, biocycle, biocycles, carbocyclic, chlortetracycline, chlortetracyclines, countercyclical, countercyclically, dicyclic, dicyclies, dicycly, doxycycline, doxycyclines, encyclic, encyclical, encyclicals, encyclics, encyclopaedia, encyclopaedias, encyclopaedic, encyclopedia, encyclopedias, encyclopedic, encyclopedically, encyclopedism, encyclopedisms, encyclopedist, encyclopedists, epicycle, epicycles, epicyclic, epicycloid, epicycloidal, epicycloids, exocyclic, hemicycle. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words containing the letters "c-c-y" | |
+2 letters: cocky, cycad, cycas, cycle, cyclo, cynic, yecch, yucca, yucch. | |
+3 letters: catchy, chancy, chicly, chucky, chymic, cicely, coccyx, conchy, cracky, curacy, cyanic, cycads, cycled, cycler, cycles, cyclic, cyclos, cynics, cystic, occupy, yecchs, yuccas. | |
+4 letters: acrylic, acyclic, bicycle, cachexy, cacodyl, cadency, calcify, calyces, calycle, cecally, chicory, chinchy, churchy, chymics, circusy, clutchy, cockeye, cockily, cockney, cockshy, cocoyam, cogency, colicky, copycat, crackly, crickey, crucify, crunchy, cryonic, cryptic, cubicly, cycases, cycasin, cyclase, cyclers, cyclery, cycling, cyclist, cyclize, cycloid, cyclone, cyclops, cylices, cynical, decency, dicycly, gynecic, haycock, lucency, mycotic, peccary, psychic, recency, recycle, secrecy, succory, vacancy. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
Hexadecimal (or equivalents, 770AD-1900s) (references)43 59 43 |
| Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519; backwards) (references)
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| American Sign Language (origins from 1620-1817 in Italy and, especially, France) (references)
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| Semaphore (1791, in France) (references)
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| Braille (1829, in France) (references)
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Morse Code (1836) (references)-.-. -.--. -.-. |
| Dancing Men (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1903) (references)
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Binary Code (1918-1938, probably earlier) (references)01000011 01011001 01000011 |
HTML Code (1990) (references)C Y C |
ISO 10646 (1991-1993) (references)0043 0059 0043 |
| British Sign Language (Fingerspelling, BSL; 1992, British Deaf Association Dictionary of British Sign Language) (references)
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Encryption (beginner's substitution cypher): (references)375937 |
| 1. Synonyms 2. Crosswords 3. Usage: Modern 4. Usage Frequency | 5. Expressions: Internet 6. Abbreviations 7. Acronyms 8. Derivations | 9. Anagrams 10. Orthography 11. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
