Mining influence rules out of ontologies

A method for extracting new implicit knowledge starting from the ontology schema by using an inductive/ deductive approach is presented. By giving a new interpretation to relationships that already exist in an ontology, we are able to return the extracted knowledge as weighted If-Then Rules among concepts. The technique, that combines data mining and link analysis, is completely general and applicable to whatever domain. Since the output is a set of "standard" If-Then Rules, it can be used to integrate existing knowledge or for supporting any other data mining process. An application of the method to an ontology representing companies and their activities is included.