The role of assumptions in knowledge engineering
Dieter Fensel, V. Richard Benjamins · International Journal of Intelligent Systems · 1998
Problem-solving methods are means of describing the inference process of knowledge-based systems. In recent years, a number of these problem-solving methods have been identified that can be reused for building new systems. However, problem-solving methods require specific types of domain knowledge and introduce specific restrictions on the tasks that can be solved by them. These requirements and restrictions are assumptions that play a key role in the reuse of problem-solving methods, in the acquisition of domain knowledge, and in the definition of the problem that can be tackled by knowledge-based systems. In this paper we discuss the different roles assumptions play in the development of knowledge-based systems and provide a survey of assumptions used in diagnostic problem solving. We show how such assumptions introduce targets and bias for goal-driven machine learning and knowledge discovery techniques. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.