Inducing and combining decision structures for expert systems
Graham J. Williams · 1991
Decisions are central to our daily existence. Every activity requires us to make decisions, many subconsciously. Knowledge, defined as an acquaintance with facts, truths, or principles (Delbridge, 1982), is the key to correct decision making. Its representation and use by machine has been a major goal throughout the history of computing machinery. Research in the discipline of Artificial Intelligence (AI) explicitly investigates ways in which knowledge can be effectively represented and employed by computers in order to make intelligent and human-appreciable decisions. Knowledge-based expert systems (KBESs) are a family of successful, practical systems arising from AI research. These systems structure knowledge (as decision structures) in such a way that it can be efficiently employed to make decisions, and yet is easily understandable by humans. Significant research problems relating to KBESs remain. One such problem area falls under the general categories of machine learning and kno...