Problem Solving Methods
Edition: 1 edition
Publisher: Springer
Published: October 27, 2000
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 154
ISBN-13: 9783540678168
Subjects: Artificial intelligence; Software Engineering; Expert systems (Computer science); Computers; Computers - General Information; Computer Books: General; Programming - Software Development; General; Artificial Intelligence - General; Expert Systems; Computers / Artificial Intelligence; Expert systems (Computer scien; Problem solving
First sentence: Problem-solving methods are present in most of the current knowledge engineering frameworks.1
Description: Researchers in Artificial Intelligence have traditionally been classified into two categories: the “neaties” and the “scruffies”. According to the scruffies, the neaties concentrate on building elegant formal frameworks, whose properties are beautifully expressed by means of definitions, lemmas, and theorems, but which are of little or no use when tackling real-world problems. The scruffies are described (by the neaties) as those researchers who build superficially impressive systems that may perform extremely well on one particular case study, but whose properties and underlying theories are hidden in their implementation, if they exist at all. As a life-long, non-card-carrying scruffy, I was naturally a bit suspicious when I first started collaborating with Dieter Fensel, whose work bears all the formal hallmarks of a true neaty. Even more alarming, his primary research goal was to provide sound, formal foundations to the area of knowledge-based systems, a traditional stronghold of the scruffies - one of whom had famously declared it “an art”, thus attempting to place it outside the range of the neaties (and to a large extent succeeding in doing so).