SAMY@gmr.com.UUCP (03/11/87)
Seminar at the General Motors Research Laboratories in Warren, Michigan.
Friday, March 20, 1987 at 10 a.m.
INDUCTION, KNOWLEDGE, and EXPERT SYSTEMS
J. ROSS QUINLAN
Head, School of Computing Sciences
New South Wales Institute of Technology, Sydney, Australia
ABSTRACT
This general talk examines inductive inference as a knowledge acquisition
methodology, both from the perspective of the performance characteristics
of the knowledge so acquired and its intelligibility. A relatively simple
class of induction methods that generate decision trees for classification
tasks is outlined and illustrated. A case study in which this approach was
used to generate diagnostic knowledge in the domain of thyroid assays is
presented, and the performance of the decision trees is compared with that
of a conventional expert system constructed by interviewing endocrinologists.
Finally, recent work in which decision trees are re-expressed as collections
of production rules has been found to improve both the accuracy and
comprehensibility of the inductively acquired knowledge.
Non-GMR personnel interested in attending please contact
R. Uthurusamy [ samy@gmr.com ] 313-986-1989