What is Type Inference in Semantic web? not in programming

Question

I want to know the definitions of type inference in the semantic web, but when i search it in google , i only find some definitions in the programming area.

Answer 1

First off, to clarify the context of the answer, the idea behind the semantic web is to have web pages that are readable by both humans and machines. Most web pages are good at the former, but not the latter.

I haven't seen the exact term "type inference" in the context of the semantic web, but what I can infer (no pun intended) is that it's referring to machine learning. For the most part, web crawlers have to make educated guesses about what kind of data is on a particular web page and what it means, hence the need for machine learning.

Answer 2

I guess you are referring to a reasoning technique used in formal ontologies.

A simple example for inferring the type (also "class" or "category") of an instance in your knowledge base: your knowledge base has types like "person", "writer", "vegetarian" and instances like "Bob White" and "Dan Brown".

Instead of assigning the types directly to the instances you can use their properties (Dan Brown writes Inferno) to dynamically assign them to a type (therefore, Dan Brown must be a writer). See also "description logic".