Commonsense knowledge bases and network analysis

We explore the ConceptNet 4 common-sense knowledge base using the tools of network analysis. This exploration is interesting in its own right, but a primary goal is developing methods that are potentially useful for improving the performance of the knowledge base on various common-sense reasoning tasks. ConceptNet has been used by its creators and others for various tasks, and ConceptNet 4 has recently been shown to perform well on the verbal portion of an IQ test for young children, using simple procedures to answer test questions. The network analysis of ConceptNet 4 is a task of interest in itself, as the knowledge base is an example of a large network with ground truth provided by the meaning of concepts. We give several examples of the results of community finding algorithms, spreading activation and rule mining. These results can be useful for finding missing and incorrect links, and for building a background knowledge that could be used to provide additional forms of reasoning in the knowledge base.