Problem-Solving Methods

1. Front Matter

   Pages I-XII

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2. What Are Problem-Solving Methods

   1. Making Assumptions for Efficiency Reasons

      Pages 7-25

3. What Are Problem-Solving Methods

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 5-5

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   2. Making Assumptions for Efficiency Reasons

      Pages 26-44

   3. An Empirical Survey of Assumptions

      Pages 45-59

4. How to Describe Problem-Solving Methods

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 41-41

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   2. A Four Component Architecture for Knowledge-Based Systems

      Pages 60-77

   3. Logics for Knowledge-Based Systems: MLPM and MCL

      Pages 78-94

   4. A Verification Framework for Knowledge-Based Systems

      Pages 95-98

5. How to Develop and Reuse Problem-Solving Methods

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 93-93

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   2. Methods for Context Explication and Adaptation

      Pages 99-119

   3. Organizing a Library of Problem-Solving Methods

      Pages 120-132

6. Conclusions and Future Work

   1. Conclusions and Future Work

      Pages 133-136

7. Back Matter

   Pages 133-154

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Researchers in Artificial Intelligence have traditionally been classified into two categories: the “neaties” and the “scruffies”. According to the scruffies, the neaties concentrate on building elegant formal frameworks, whose properties are beautifully expressed by means of definitions, lemmas, and theorems, but which are of little or no use when tackling real-world problems. The scruffies are described (by the neaties) as those researchers who build superficially impressive systems that may perform extremely well on one particular case study, but whose properties and underlying theories are hidden in their implementation, if they exist at all. As a life-long, non-card-carrying scruffy, I was naturally a bit suspicious when I first started collaborating with Dieter Fensel, whose work bears all the formal hallmarks of a true neaty. Even more alarming, his primary research goal was to provide sound, formal foundations to the area of knowledge-based systems, a traditional stronghold of the scruffies - one of whom had famously declared it “an art”, thus attempting to place it outside the range of the neaties (and to a large extent succeeding in doing so).

• adaptation
• development
• formal language
• formal specification
• knowledge
• knowledge engineering
• knowledge-based systems
• language
• problem solving
• problem solving methods reuse
• software
• software architecture
• software engineering
• theory of knowledge
• verification

• Division of Mathematics and Computer Science, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

  Dieter Fensel

Policies and ethics