Patent ID: 8595174
Filing Date: 2013-11-26
Classification: G06F,G06N,G06Q

Abstract:
1. A method of generating a target cause in an answer support system to aid in solving a current problem, comprising: receiving known problem symptoms of the current problem, said known problem symptoms being included among stored problem symptoms associated with problem causes stored in a knowledge database; searching the problem causes in said knowledge database to find a plurality of potential causes corresponding to the known problem symptoms; attempting to determine a target cause of the current problem from among the plurality of potential causes based on attributes associated with the known problem symptoms; in response to an inability to determine the target cause of the current problem, choosing as a selected attribute an attribute which is not among the attributes associated with the known problem symptoms, wherein an attribute value of the selected attribute is determined to be most likely to identify the target cause of the current problem from said plurality of potential causes found in the knowledge database; determining the selected attribute to be an attribute having maximum information gain which is not among the attributes associated with the known problem symptoms, the maximum information gain being based on an entropy value calculation taking into account positive and negative examples of remaining attributes; determining the target cause based on the selected attribute; and generating a solution based on the target cause.