Page 247 - DCAP208_Management Support Systems
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Management Support Systems
Notes Game Playing: Games are good vehicles for research because they are well formalized,
small, and self-contained. They are therefore easily programmed. Games can be good
models of competitive situations, so principles discovered in game-playing programs
may be applicable to practical problems.
Self Assessment
Fill in the blanks:
1. ................... is a field of study that encompasses computational techniques for performing
tasks that apparently require intelligence when performed by humans.
2. The ..................., proposed by Alan Turing, was designed to provide a satisfactory
operational definition of intelligence.
3. In the ................... approach to AI, the whole emphasis was on correct inferences.
4. ................... refers to manipulation of formulas, rather than arithmetic on numeric values.
14.2 Expert System
Expert system is programs that attempt to perform the duty of an expert in the problem domain
in which it is defined. Expert systems are computer programs that have been constructed (with
the assistance of human experts) in such a way that they are capable of functioning at the
standard of (and sometimes even at a higher standard than) human experts in given fields that
embody a depth and richness of knowledge that permit them to perform at the level of an
expert.
14.2.1 Rule-based System
Using a set of assertions, which collectively form the ‘working memory’, and a set of rules that
specify how to act on the assertion set, a rule-based system can be created. Rule-based systems
are fairly simplistic, consisting of little more than a set of if-then statements, but provide the
basis for so-called “expert systems” which are widely used in many fields. The concept of an
expert system is this: the knowledge of an expert is encoded into the rule set. When exposed to
the same data, the expert system will perform in a similar manner as the expert.
14.2.2 Components of Rule-based Expert System
Rule-based systems are a relatively simple model that can be adapted to any number of problems.
To create a rule-based system for a given problem, you must have (or create) the following:
A set of facts to represent the initial working memory. This should be anything relevant
to the beginning state of the system.
A set of rules. This should encompass any and all actions that should be taken within the
scope of a problem, but nothing irrelevant. The number of rules in the system can affect its
performance, so you don’t want any that aren’t needed.
A condition that determines that a solution has been found or that none exists. This is
necessary to terminate some rule-based systems that find themselves in infinite loops
otherwise.
In fact, there are three essential components to a fully functional rule based expert system: the
knowledge base, the working memory and the inference engine.
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