Abstract

1 Introduction et al. task modeling level a problem solving method provides a means of identifying, at each step, candidate actions. It provides one or more mechanisms for selecting among candidate actions and ensures that the selected action is implemented
Knowledge-based systems research uses real-world problems to illustrate its advances and accomplishments. Real-world problems stretch the limits of architectures and provide new challenges. However, when solving real-world problems the interactions between the problem statement, the problem solution and the architectural principles employed to obtain a solution become blurred. As Figure 1 illustrates, the world is a complex place and in the process of implementing an application, the designer continually makes choices based on (1) the baseline architecture used to implement the application,(2) the characteristics of the problem itself, or (3) arbitrary decisions to simplify the problem. This means that it is dicult to assess the potential and the apropriateness of a problem-solving architecture in itself when it is illustrated with a real-world example. Moreover, it becomes di cult to assess the research contribution of a proposed architecture, that is, one cannot assess whether it was the architecture that allowed for this solution or if the solution became possible due to the designer's ability to rephrase the problem into the architecture's terminology and its system of concepts.(Most problem solvers being Turing-Machine equivalent an ingenious designer can solve any (solvable) problem with any architecture.) Such di culties do not exist when a method is illustrated with toy problems, as their …

Date

December 8, 1995

Authors

Yolanda Gil, Marc Linster

Journal

Proceedings of the Ninth Knowledge-Acquisition for Knowledge-Based Systems Workshop, Ban, Alberta, Canada