Patent Document ID: 4866634
Application ID: 07084252

Base Claim:
1. An expert system shell comprising: (a) a computer having a display device, an entry device, and a memory for string a knowledge base; said knowledge base comprising: (1) variables having values represented by tables of probabitlity distributions keyed by zero, one or more formal parameters; (2) functions defining relationships between the values of each dependent variable and the values of its corresponding argument variables; (3) means for computing the probability distribution of the values of a dependent variable from the probability distribution of the values of the corresponding argument variables; and (b) means for propagating the consequences of a change in the value of a variable to maintain the functional relationships among a selected subset of the dependent variables.

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Claim 4:
4. The system of claim 1 further comprising means for automatically generating menus for allowing the end user to see all the existing instances of a variable at runtime and means for allowing the end user to see subsets of the full menu by using a wildcard matching procedure.