Subject: From: AIList Moderator Kenneth Laws <AIList-REQUEST%sri-ai.arpa@CSNET-RELAY>

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 28 Feb 86 22:36:04 est

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Subject: AIList Digest   V4 #38
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AIList Digest           Thursday, 27 Feb 1986      Volume 4 : Issue 38

Today's Topics:
  Query - Prolog Books,
  AI Tools - Pointer to Logo & Arity/Prolog 4.0,
  Binding - Ross Quinlan,
  Humor - "Real" Story Behind MRS's Name & NL Dialogue System,
  Comment - TI's Progress (SI Interactions Review),
  Cognitive Psychology - Knowledge Structures,
  Expert Systems - Software Engineering,
  Knowledge Representation - The Community Authoring Project

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 26 Feb 86 14:21:00 EST
From: [email-masked]
Subject: Prolog Books

Could someone recommend a good list of books about Prolog (besides
"Programming in Prolog" by Clocksin) which would be good for someone
to read who is justing learning the language?

Greg Elder

  [This message was accidentally truncated in the last digest due to
  the lack of a blank line following the header.  -- KIL]

------------------------------

Date: 21 Feb 86 14:02:04 GMT
From: rochester!ritcv!rocksvax!rocksanne!sunybcs!ellie!rapaport@seismo
      (William J. Rapaport)
Subject: Re: Re: Pointers to Logo?

>
> >> The only "texts" on Logo which I have thus far been able to locate
> >> are of the "How to Teach Logo to Your First Grade Class" variety.
> >> --
> >>    Michael J. Hartsough

        Try Brian Harvey, COMPUTER SCIENCE LOGO STYLE,
        a series of 3 books, 2 of which have appeared, published
        by MIT Press (isbn for the first, called "Intermediate
        Programming" is 0-262-58072-1).

--
                                William J. Rapaport
                                Assistant Professor
Dept. of Computer Science, SUNY Buffalo, Buffalo, NY 14260
(716) 636-3193, 3180
uucp:   ...{allegra,decvax,watmath}!sunybcs!rapaport
        ...{cmcl2,hao,harpo}!seismo!rochester!rocksvax!sunybcs!rapaport
cs:     rapaport@buffalo
arpa:   rapaport%buffalo@csnet-relay
bitnet: rapaport@sunybcs

------------------------------

Date: 21 Feb 86 06:59:44 GMT
From: [email-masked]  (Todd H. Ogasawara)
Subject: Arity/Prolog 4.0 users out there?

I just received the Arity/Prolog 4.0 update to their interpreter and
compiler for the IBM PC a little while ago and have found this
implementation to be ever better and faster than the last (which was
very good).
Would be very interested to know if other netlanders are using
Arity/Prolog and, if so, what you are doing with it.
...todd
Todd Ogasawara, Computer Sciences Corp.
NOSC-Hawaii Laboratories
UUCPmail: {akgua,allegra,decvax,ihnp4,ucbvax}!sdcsvax!noscvax!ogasawar
MILNET:   OGASAWAR@NOSC

------------------------------

Date: 17 Feb 86 16:02:00 GMT
From: [email-masked]
Subject: Binding - Ross Quinlan

Re: Need source of ID3 for Machine Learning

Quinlan's adress is:
Ross Quinlan,
Head, School of Computing Science,
New South Wales Institute of Technology,
P.O. Box 123,
Broadway, 2007 New South Wales,
Australia

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 25 Feb 86 14:24:03 est
From: Russell Greiner <[email-masked]>
Subject: "Real" Story behind MRS's name

  > Date: Tue, 4 Feb 86 15:46:28 EST
  > From: [email-masked] (Warwick Bolam)
  > Subject: Correction to correction to name of MRS
  >
  > Is there anyone who REALLY knows what MRS stands for?  I have a number of
  > MRS documents and NONE of them says "MRS stand for ..."

Years ago, Mike genesereth, Russ greiner and dave Smith got together,
along with some other illustrious researchers, and decided to create
a new and better representation language.  To achieve our original
objective of modifiability, the

        Modifiable Representation System

was born.  When we noticed that the only thing truly modifiable about it
was its name, it was rechristened the

        Meta-level Representation System.

As this, too, seemed a bit misleading, we considered several other
names.  Soon, we were forced to realize that we had an inherently

        Misnamed Representation System,

which still seems its best name.  (Of course, if this name really is
appropriate then it is, in fact, inappropriate.  That, in turn, means
it is not misnamed, which means it is misnamed, which ...)

[Apology: The story above is basically correct; only the names have
 been changed ...]

Russ Greiner
University of Toronto
(formerly of Stanford University).

------------------------------

Date: 20 Feb 86 20:59:21 GMT
From: [email-masked]
       (michael maxwell)
Subject: Re: Dialogue help please needed ?

In article <[email-masked]> c/o [email-masked] (George Weir) writes:
>...  if you have a system working which
>manages dialogue in of course natural langauge (complete with efficient
>interpreter/complier), and its able to cope with all known syntactic forms,
>as well as most semantics, please send me a copy...

My wife and I are currently working on such a system.  The project name is
"SCOTT", which stands for "Self COmmunicating ToT."  Our project has been
underway for just over three years now, not counting a nine month prototyping
period.  Unfortunately, we are unable to post to the network...
Additionally, there are a few bugs, such as inappropriate case marking ("My
wanna go to the truck store!"), incorrect placement of negation ("My no wanna
go to sleep!"), "syllabic" metathesis ("You got for to buy me candy" = "You
_forgot_ to..."), etc.  We regard these as trivial problems, since the
problems which linguists acknowledge to be truly difficult (e.g. the semantics
of nonexistent entities, such as imaginary people that cause the breakage/
disappearance of objects, and such pragmatic issues as proper attachment of PPs
and extraposed relative clauses) appear to be well on the way to resolution.
We would also like to report that it has been great fun...
--
Mike Maxwell
Boeing Artificial Intelligence Center
        ...uw-beaver!uw-june!bcsaic!michaelm

------------------------------

Date: Mon 24 Feb 86 09:20:59-PST
From: Tom Garvey <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Review - SI Interactions, 2/86

It sounds as if TI for all their investment in AI, has made progress
toward the partial solution of two problems.  Since this is about the
average number of examples required for receiving a Ph.D. in AI, they
seem to have partially fulfilled the requirements.

Clearly, expertise in AI marketing is what students should be striving
for today -- the state-of-the-art of the technology itself is of (at
best) secondary importance.

Cheers,
Tom

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 17 Feb 86 12:30:41 pst
From: decwrl!pyramid!hplabs!tektronix!uw-beaver!ssc-vax!bcsaic!pamp
      @ucbvax.berkeley.edu
Subject: Re: Cognitive Psychology - Knowledge Structures

In article <[email-masked]> you write:
>From:     [email-masked]
>
>         I am  looking  for information about the knowledge structure
>         differences of people who have different levels of expertise
>         in  a  subject.  For  example, what is the difference in the
>         knowledge  structure of an "apprentice", a "journeyman",or a
>         "master".
>
>                                       Roger Thompson
>                                       Thompson@UMASS

One that I can recommend right off hand is -

        Kolodner,Janet L.,1984,Towards an understanding of the role of
                experience in the evolution from novice to expert:
                in Developments in expert systems;M.J.Coombs,ed.;
                Academic Press,p.95-116.

You might also look into Schank's work

        Schank,R.C.,1982, Dynamic Memory:A thoery of learning in
                people and computers; Cambridge University Press,
                Cambridge.

P.M.Pincha-Wagener

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 23 Feb 86 18:00:35 est
From: Valerie Kierulf <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Expert Systems and Software Engineering

Jeg kan ikke hjelpe deg, men etter det som jeg ser, leser og hoerer, har
folkne som driver paa med AI aldri hoert noe om Software Engineering!
Jeg ville vaere veldig glad aa hoere av det motsatte !!!!

Translation: I cannot help you. But after all I see, read and hear, people
             that have to do with AI don't know about the existence of Software
             Engineering. I would be very glad to hear the opposite !!!!!!

Valerie Kierulf

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 21 Feb 86 18:12:28 est
From: Rob Jacob <[email-masked]>
Subject: Expert Systems and Software Engineering

Saw your message about software engineering for expert systems on the
AIList...glad you asked.

Here at the Naval Research Laboratory Judy Froscher and I are trying to
work on just this problem.  We are interested in how rule-based systems
can be built so that they will be easier to change.  Our basic solution
is to divide the set of rules up into pieces and limit the connectivity
of the pieces.

I, too, would be very interested to hear about any other work in this
area.  When we describe our work to people, we often hear "That is just
what we need...why isn't somebody working on this?"  But we do not often
hear about other people actually working on this problem.  Two you might
try are Gregg Vesonder at Bell Labs and Steve Fickas at University of
Oregon.

I'm going to attach a short abstract about our work to the end of this
message and some references.

Good luck,
Rob Jacob

ARPA:   jacob@nrl-css
UUCP:   ...!decvax!nrl-css!jacob
SNAIL:  Code 7590, Naval Research Lab, Washington, D.C. 20375

    Developing a Software Engineering Methodology for Rule-based Systems

                            Robert J.K. Jacob
                           Judith N. Froscher

                        Naval Research Laboratory
                            Washington, D.C.

Current expert systems are typically difficult to change once they are built.
The objective of this research is to develop a design methodology that will
make a knowledge-based system easier to change, particularly by people other
than its original developer.  The basic approach for solving this problem is
to divide the information in a knowledge base and attempt to reduce the
amount of information that each single programmer must understand before he
can make a change to the expert system.  We thus divide the domain knowledge
in an expert system into groups and then attempt to limit carefully and
specify formally the flow of information between these groups, in order to
localize the effects of typical changes within the groups.

By studying the connectivity of rules and facts in several typical rule-based
expert systems, we found that they seem to have a latent structure, which can
be used to support this approach.  We have developed a methodology based on
dividing the rules into groups and concentrating attention on those facts
that carry information between rules in different groups.  We have also
studied several algorithms for grouping the rules automatically and for
measuring coupling and cohesion of alternate rule groupings in a knowledge
base.

                               REFERENCES

J.N. Froscher and R.J.K. Jacob, "Designing Expert Systems for Ease of
Change," Proc. IEEE Symposium on Expert Systems in Government, Washington,
D.C., pp. 246-251, 1985.

R.J.K. Jacob and J.N. Froscher, "Developing a Software Engineering
Methodology for Rule-based Systems," 1985 Conference on Intelligent Systems
and Machines, Oakland University, 1985.

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 20 Feb 86 15:45:31 pst
From: Bruce McHenry <[email-masked]>
Subject: The Community Authoring Project

       [Forwarded from the AI-Ed distribution by Laws@SRI-AI.]

A New R&D Program: The Community Authoring Project (CAP)

        The goal of the CAP is to provide a system which a large number
of people can use to create and store a complex body of knowledge.
Such a body, because it is authored and edited by many people, will
address a wide variety of individual perspectives.  Individuals will be
guided through this body with the help of user agents.  The user agents
will correspond with "idea" agents which monitor the formation of
communities.  While this approach applies to information and management
systems in general, the CAP aims to develop prototypes which can be
used in leading universities over the next few years.  Such
universities will posess advanced workstations upon which CAP software
may run.  The resulting community information system should provide
immediate benefits to teachers and students who may use it to create,
either alone or in conference, multimedia (visual & aural) "sections".
Sections may be embedded in eachother and interactively created,
explored and manipulated.  CAP technology will enable communities to
create broadbased bodies of knowledge in ways such that the
individual's "question in mind" can be readily addressed.  The testbed
sites will also provide attractive cultures for research into AI (i.e.
knowledge based, natural language and self-organizing) systems.  However,
the CAP's design philosophy is based on a pragmatic view of common
human methods for locating and disseminating information.  Its basis in
community participation provides a radical departure from current
methods of authoring interactive materials and it is expected that the
CAP will dramatically influence the development of interactive media
such as digital compact discs.

Bruce McHenry

------------------------------

End of AIList Digest
********************