The Heuristic DENDRAL program for explaining empirical data
Bruce G. Buchanan, Joshua Lederberg · Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC) · 1971
The Heuristic DENDRAL program uses an information processing model of scientific reasoning to explain experimental data in organic chemistry. The report summarizes the organization and results of the program for computer scientists. The program is divided into three main parts: planning, structure generation, and evaluation. The planning phase infers constraints on the search space from the empirical data input to the system. The structure generation phase searches a tree whose termini are models of chemical molecules using pruning heuristics of various kinds. The evaluation phase tests the candidate structures against the original data. Results of the program's analyses of some test data are discussed. (Author)