Diagnostic Problem Solving: Combining Heuristic, Approximate and Causal Reasoning

Rating:
Summary: Outstanding
Review: Many of the early, pioneering expert systems were devoted to aspects of medical diagnosis, and diagnostic problems (not only in medicine but also in other domains, such as electronic circuit design) still continue to attract a great deal of attention from researchers and systems developers. To date, however, the designers of diagnostic systems have generally been content to incorporate all the requisite knowledge within a single, homogenous structure and to opt for a single mode of reasoning.

In this book the authors describe in detail the design and development of the CHECK project at the University of Turin which was undertaken in order to show that it is possible to combine different kinds of knowledge structure and different modes of reasoning within a single system. Indeed, the authors argue, diagnostic problems are, in general, so complex that only a system in which these different kinds of knowledge and different levels of reasoning interact can hope to reproduce the complexity and subtlety of the human expert's thought processes. The book demonstrates that the authors' innovative approach has many advantages, and the detailed description of their system will allow other researchers, working in a whole range of different domains, to build upon their pioneering work.

Rating:
Summary: Outstanding
Review: Many of the early, pioneering expert systems were devoted to aspects of medical diagnosis, and diagnostic problems (not only in medicine but also in other domains, such as electronic circuit design) still continue to attract a great deal of attention from researchers and systems developers. To date, however, the designers of diagnostic systems have generally been content to incorporate all the requisite knowledge within a single, homogenous structure and to opt for a single mode of reasoning.

In this book the authors describe in detail the design and development of the CHECK project at the University of Turin which was undertaken in order to show that it is possible to combine different kinds of knowledge structure and different modes of reasoning within a single system. Indeed, the authors argue, diagnostic problems are, in general, so complex that only a system in which these different kinds of knowledge and different levels of reasoning interact can hope to reproduce the complexity and subtlety of the human expert's thought processes. The book demonstrates that the authors' innovative approach has many advantages, and the detailed description of their system will allow other researchers, working in a whole range of different domains, to build upon their pioneering work.