balaji@USC-CSE.USC.EDU (06/27/86)
I am sending this message for a friend. I will forward replies to her. Thanks. Balaji I am writing a LISP program to classify fish and determine their evolutionary history. This involves nesting species of fish into a hierarchical taxonomic arrangement, on the basis of characteristics shared among the species. My program will need to determine whether characteristics are primitive or advanced, in order to determine how they fit into the taxonomic hierarchy. This requires some degree of heuristic reasoning and this part of the program will probably be constructed as a mini expert system. The nesting process (i.e. arranging the species in a taxonomic hierarchy) is a more or less standard procedure, but requires flexibility to utilize heuristics in some cases. To get a better idea of how to go about writing my program, I would like to find out about existing programs that deal with issues similar to mine. If anyone has any suggestions about where I might find AI systems that might help me, or papers on such systems, I would be most appreciative if they send me a message. Thank you. Noelle Sedor