A text fragment that represents a goal people want to track, something they want to remind themselves of, or learn how to do. Tasks must include a verb in order to reduce ambiguity.

Task Definition for Modeling Tasks

A task in which two or more individual steps (which are tasks in and of themselves) need to be completed.

Complex Task Definition for Modeling Tasks

Subtask Definition for Modeling Tasks

Temporal dependencies: Completion of a subtask may depend on the completion of other subtasks. 

Notation: subtask B depends on ( <-- ) subtask A

Temporal Dependencies Definition for Modeling Tasks

1. Task
2. Complex Task
3. Subtask
4. Temporal Dependencies

University of Rochester

Some researchers have used graph theory to create an end-to-end pipeline that creates a dependency graph from unstructured text. It represents subtasks and their time dependencies on each other. It is a way to automate the decomposition process.

Using Graph Theory to Decompose Tasks

Zhang, Y., Jauhar, S. K., Kiseleva, J., White, R., &amp; Roth, D. (2021). Learning to Decompose and Organize Complex Tasks. ACL Anthology. https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/2021.naacl-main.217/. 

Learning to Decompose and Organize Complex Tasks

1. Can we accurately and automatically generate subtasks given an input complex task?
2. Can we correctly identify the temporal dependencies between subtasks?

Research Questions (Learning to Decompose and Organize Complex Tasks)

The model is being treated as a graph induction problem, i.e. how to make a graph given the input. In graph theory, there are two main parts of a graph: nodes (points) and edges (what connects them). Here, nodes represent subtasks. The edges between the nodes represent temporal dependencies, which illustrate which tasks must be completed before another one is actionable. For example, you must create a guest list before you can send out invitations for a party. The graph is directed, which means it functions more like a flow chart instead of a plot of relations. The graph is induced from unstructured text found online, so it is a general and scalable approach.

Introduction to Graph Theory and How It Relates to Task Decomposition

These equations formalize "make a flow chart" so that the process can be automated.

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