Ernest Davis


Department of Computer Science
Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences
New York University


Fall '98 Classes

Reaching Me

Email is best.

Academic Family Tree

Books

  • Representing and Acquiring Geographic Knowledge, Pitman Press, 1986.
  • Representations of Commonsense Knowledge, Morgan Kaufmann, 1990.

    Recent Papers

    The Kinematics of Cutting Solid Objects. Annals of Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence, vol. 9, no. 3,4, 1993, pp. 253-305.


    Knowledge Preconditions for Plans. Journal of Logic and Computation, vol. 4, no. 5, Oct. 1994, pp. 721-766


    Approximations of Shape and Configuration Space.


    Approximation and Abstraction in Solid Object Kinematics.


    A Highly Expressive Language of Spatial Constraints.


    The Naive Physics Perplex


    Order of Magnitude Comparisons of Distance

    Research Interests

    In my research, I study the problem of representating commonsense knowledge: that is, the problem of taking the basic knowledge about the real world that is common to all humans; expressing it in a form that is systematic enough to be used by a computer program; and providing the program with techniques for effectively using that knowledge. My work has focussed primarily on spatial and physical reasoning, but I have also looked at reasoning about knowledge, belief, plans, and goals, and its interaction with physical reasoning.

    If you are interested in commonsense reasoning, you might like to take a look at the home page of the Fourth Symposium on Logical Formalizations of Commonsense Reasoning and its associated Problem Page