ruffwork@oregon-state.CSNET.UUCP (04/01/87)
> > First, the dissemination of Tiny MYCIN sounds interesting. > I wish I had a convenient Common LISP machine to try it out. > I realize that TMYCIN is just a tool, but I wonder how good a tool > it really is. What is the value of learning about this tool > (to learn about ESs) when you don't have an expert around (rhetorical > question, obviously some value)? I ask this because I have a relative > who does research in pathology and got his PhD in bacteriology > at BYU (any connection with Dugway Proving Ground is not coincidence). > > --eugene miya > NASA Ames Research Center > eugene@ames-aurora.ARPA Well, 3 months ago I would have said that an expert system tool in vivo is not much use, but now...I was a TA (teaching assistant) for an expert systems course here at Oregon State last term taught by Tom Dietterich. It was his first time around teaching this subject and so he decided to go at it from a case study/theory viewpoint (if the theory of expert systems isn't oxymorphic :-). Thus there was really nothing said about how to implement systems. The term project though WAS to implement a small expert system (4 or 5 weeks to do this, and we DON'T have any expert systems tools - just LISP, PROLOG, and OPS5). The projects were very impressive overall, but the style/organization/etc. were generally dismall. Not in a traditional sense but more from an expert systems sense. The code was documented, modular, etc. but not in a way that made it easy to analyze as an expert system. It was often hard to understand WHAT knowledge the system had from code reading. What is needed is both sides of the coin - the theory/case study, and a how-to-implement course. Having the proper tools is bound to help here, but several project in the above languages WERE readable as knowledge bases (style makes a difference). IF the TMYCIN tool comes with some GOOD examples (no matter how toy-ish) I think that a person could learn quite a bit about the how-to-code end of expert systems - which is just as important (in its own way) as the theory. --ritchey ruff (reformed couch potato) ruffwork%oregon-state@csnet-relay (soon to be ruffwork@cs.orst.edu) from the Home for the Artificially Intelligent -------