MEASURING THE VALUE OF KNOWLEDGE

The quality of knowledge that a system has substantially influences it s performance. Often, the terms ''knowledge'', its ''quality'' and how it is ''measured'' or ''valuated'', are left vague enough to accommod ate several ad hoc interpretations. This paper articulates two definit ions of knowledge and their associated value measures. The paper focus es on the theory underlying measurements and its application to knowle dge valuation; it stresses the issue of constructing meaningful measur es rather than discussing some of the desirable properties of measures (e.g. reliability or validity). A detailed example of knowledge valua tion using the measures is described. The example demonstrates the imp ortance for system understanding and the difficulty of valuating knowl edge. It shows the importance of employing several different measures simultaneously for a single valuation. The paper concludes by discussi ng the scope of and relationships between the measures.