Facts

Overview

A fact in Rainbird is when two concept instances are connected together by a relationship and expressed with the percentage of certainty.

E.g. Given your knowledge map has a relationship of

(Country) > has a national language of > (Language)

a fact for this relationship could be

England > has a national language of > English. Certainty = 100%

This is a way of expressing knowledge that is zgenerally referred to as a fact, but in some cases it may be referred to as a relationship instance.

What is the purpose of facts?

Facts are central to the Rainbird reasoning engine being able to provide a decision. When you query a knowledge map, the engine will try to gather the necessary facts that enables it to provide a decision with a degree of certainty.

Fact source and scope

Facts can be generated in different ways. This is described as the source of a fact.

The scope of a fact refers to how it can be reused:

• A global fact is one that is available to all sessions made to that knowledge map, because they are hard-coded within the knowledge map. This is only recommended for data that is unlikely to change.

• A local fact is one that is provided or generated within a specific session. This is recommended for contextual and dynamic data that is "local" to that decision.

A session refers to the session in which a decision or decisions are made. When you query Rainbird, you first start a session, then make a query, you may respond to questions and then you get a result.

You could think of a session as like starting a conversation with Rainbird. Some knowledge (facts) will be available across all conversations (the knowledge of a countries national language) and some are local to a particular conversation (the country a person was born).

Fact source	Description	Scope
Knowledge map	These are hard-coded directly into the knowledge map. They are classified as global facts and are available for any session against that knowledge map.	Global
Inject	a user or a system injects facts into a session before making a query.	Local
Datasource	a knowledge map is configured to get data from an external API and generate facts from the response.	Local
Rule	A fact has been inferred via a rule configured in the knowledge map	Local
Answer	A knowledge map is configured to ask an end-user in order to generate a fact.	Local
Synthesised	a fact automatically generated by the engine for optional conditions where no other route to the goal exists.	Local

Creating facts in the knowledge maps (Global facts)

Facts can be created in the studio by opening a concept and clicking on one of its instances.

Adding a fact

This example shows a fact for a singular relationship:

This example shows a fact for a plural relationship:

ADD INFORMATION ABOUT WHAT IS SUPPORTED (I.E. PLURAL DATES AND NUMBERS CANNOT BE ADDED)

A list of each relationship is provided, facts are added by clicking in the object column and selecting the appropriate object-side concept instance.

Certainty defaults to 100, this can be changed by clicking in the certainty column for the fact.

For plural relationships clicking in the object column presents a list of valid concept instances for the object side, select each instance you want to create facts for.