---
title: "Constraints on Tree Structure in Concept Formation"
authors:
  - "Kathleen B. McKusick"
  - "Pat Langley"
doi: ""
url: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1991/119"
pdf: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1991/0119.pdf"
venue: "Proceedings of the Twelfth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence"
year: 1991
pages: "810-815"
track: "Learning Be Knowledge Acquisition"
keywords:
---

# Constraints on Tree Structure in Concept Formation

Kathleen B. McKusick, Pat Langley

*Proceedings of the Twelfth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence*, pages 810-815.

## Abstract

We describe ARACHNE, a concept formation system that uses explicit constraints on tree structure and local restructuring operators to produce well-formed probabilistic concept trees. We also present a quantitative measure of tree quality and compare the system's performance in artificial and natural domains to that of COBWEB, a well-known concept formation algorithm. The results suggest that ARACHNE frequently constructs higher-quality trees than COBWEB, while still retaining the ability to make accurate predictions.