Question

I’m starting to learn Prolog, and I’m running into a compiler error with my code. I’m trying to write some code that will check if a family is in poverty if they meet certain conditions. The last line couple of lines are the poverty conditions, and that’s where I’m getting the Opertator Expected error. I’m trying to say that given the family ID, if the size of that family is one, and the income is less than 11170, then that family is in poverty. And for a family of size >8 the poverty level is 38890 plus 3960 for every additional family member. How can I correct these errors? family_in_poverty should be returning true or false.

family(10392,
       person(tom, fox, born(7, may, 1960), works(cnn, 152000)),
       person(ann, fox, born(19, april, 1961), works(nyu, 65000)),
       % here are the children...
       [person(pat, fox, born(5, october, 1983), unemployed),
        person(jim, fox, born(1, june, 1986), unemployed),
        person(amy, fox, born(17, december, 1990), unemployed)]).

family(38463, 
       person(susan, rothchild, born(13, september, 1972), works(osu, 75000)),
       person(jess, rothchild, born(20, july, 1975), works(nationwide, 123500)),
       % here are the children...
       [person(ace, rothchild, born(2, january, 2010), unemployed)]).

married(FirstName1, LastName1, FirstName2, LastName2) :-
    family(_, person(FirstName1, LastName1, _, _),
           person(FirstName2, LastName2, _, _), _).

married(FirstName1, LastName1, FirstName2, LastName2) :-
    family(_, person(FirstName2, LastName2, _, _),
           person(FirstName1, LastName1, _, _), _).

householdIncome(ID, Income) :-
    family(ID, person(_, _, _, works(_, Income1)),
           person(_, _, _, works(_, Income2)), _),
    Income is Income1 + Income2.

exists(Person) :- family(_, Person, _, _).
exists(Person) :- family(_, _, Person, _).
exists(Person) :- family(_, _, _, Children), member(Person, Children).

householdSize(ID, Size) :-
    family(ID, _, _, Children),
    length(Children, ChildrenCount),
    Size is 2 + ChildrenCount.

:- use_module(library(lists)). % load lists library for sumlist predicate

average(List, Avg) :-
    sumlist(List, Sum),
    length(List, N),
    Avg is Sum / N.

family_in_poverty(FamilyID) :- householdSize(FamilyID, 1), householdIncome(ID, X), X <= 11170.
family_in_poverty(FamilyID) :- householdSize(FamilyID, 2), householdIncome(ID, X), X <= 15130.
........
family_in_poverty(FamilyID) :- householdSize(FamilyID, Y), householdIncome(ID, X), X <= 38890 + (Y - 8)*3960, Y > 8.

Answer 1

Prolog doesn’t use is <= for a numeric comparison, just =< for less-than-or-equal.

When you use the is keyword, this is an infix predicate is/2 that evaluates the right-hand side as a numeric expression and unifies the result with the left-hand side.