AN ANALYSIS ON THE INFERENCE GUIDING STRATEGIES - THE BENEFITS AND COSTS

In many applications of knowledge-based systems, initial facts and dat a are not sufficient to reach a pertinent result and more facts are ne eded to proceed the logic inference. What additional information is to be selected and how to select the information comprise the inference guiding problem. The analyses and experiments in this paper suggest th at: (1) inference guiding has a substantial influence on effectiveness and efficiency of entire inference process in many knowledge-based sy stems; (2) inference guiding strategies on random bases, as used in ma ny knowledge-based systems on the market, are not effective; and (3) t he heuristic which was developed by Wang and Vande Vate may improve in ference guiding significantly at an acceptable cost. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.