Abstract
In this chapter we are going to examine how an expert system operates. We will look at the major functions in detail, at the programming level. The reason for descending to such a detailed level is not because the algorithms are unusual or inherently difficult. On the contrary, the reason is to show that they are not. Nevertheless, so as not to lose sight of fundamental ideas, we will start with a very simple — and inadequate — formulation and elaborate on it.
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Further reading
P.H. Winston and B.K.P. Horn describe a rule handler in their book LISP (Addison-Wesley, 1981).
For a thorough discussion of semantic triples — their philosophical, psychological, computational, and linguistic aspects — read J.F. Sowa’s Conceptual Structures: Information Processing in Mind and Machine (Addison-Wesley, 1984). If you plan to develop expert systems seriously, this book should give you a sound intellectual base to build on, although it is not for the faint-hearted.
The method of using accumulating parameters — as used, for example, in the forward chainer — is described in Peter Henderson’s Functional Programming: Application and Implementation (Prentice-Hall, 1980).
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© 1985 Peter S. Sell
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Sell, P.S. (1985). Operation. In: Expert Systems — A Practical Introduction. Macmillan Computer Science Series. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-07416-7_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-07416-7_5
Publisher Name: Palgrave, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-07418-1
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-07416-7
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