Machine learning for optimized learning of human-understandable logical rules from medical or other data

Abstract

A machine learning method for learning and applying a rule set from relational data includes receiving a graph representing relational data, wherein nodes represent elements of the graph, and edges represent relationships between nodes, and generating an intermediate representation of the graph by mapping features of the nodes and edges of the graph to an intermediate vector representation. Optimized logical rules that define the nodes and edges of the graph based on the intermediate vector representation are learned by: defining a maximum satisfiability (MAX-SAT) problem for the graph; and estimating a gradient around a solution of the MAX-SAT problem to produce the optimized logical rules, which are applied to a new graph. The data can be medical data and the graph can be used in a machine-learning task, such as using the medical data for disease prediction, for optimization of the machine-learning task and/or to support decision-making.