phil@mva.cs.liv.ac.uk (12/09/88)
One of our 3rd year students has a problem with an Expert System for the
Mac. We purchased a copy of "Instant Expert" by Human Intellect Systems
a while ago (it was actually purchased on our behalf by one of our students).
This year on eof our 3rd years is doing a project involving it and has
discovered a number of bugs. Knowledge Base entries are of the form of
rule-based prototypes. Many of these work well, but at some point the system
breaks down (at a maximum of 24 rules in one case) and starts to give spurious,
(though repeatably so) results. e.g.
IF
Animal is a Reptile
Animal eats meat
Animal lives in warm swamp environments
Animal has been known to grow to quite large lengths
THEN
Animal is a Crocodile
only the first three assertions are recognised. When searching for an
assertion, the system managed to find a mis-typed assertion in a rule which
contained no such assertion! Things seem to get worse and worse. The
examples that were supplied work OK, until you attempt to modify them.
OK, now to the questions:
1) Has anyone used this package and managed to get good results from it?
2) Are there any bug fixes available for this package?
3) Can anyone recommend a different Expert System package that our Department
could purchase?
If anyone has any ideas I would be glad to hear them, though I know
nothing about Expert Systems and am merely supposed to be the "Mac expert"
of the Department.
Phil Jimmieson, ***************************************************
Computer Science Dept., * ** Note New Address & UserName ** *
Liverpool University, * JANET : PHIL@UK.AC.LIV.CS.MVA *
Merseyside, England, * ARPA : PHIL%mva.cs.liv.ac.uk@cunyvm.cuny.edu *
L69 3BX * *
* old address SQPHIL@UK.AC.LIV.CSVAX may work *
(UK) 051-794-3689 ***************************************************