Describing Problem Solving Methods using Anytime Performance profiles

Annette ten Teije
Frank van Harmelen

We propose the use of anytime performance profiles to describe the computational behaviour of problem solving methods. A performance profile describes how the quality of the output of an algorithm gradually increases as a function of the computation time. Such anytime descriptions of problem solving methods are attractive because they allow a trade-off to be made between available computation time and output-quality. It turns out that many problem solving methods found in the literature have a natural anytime behaviour, which has remained largely unexploited until now.
In this paper we propose an axiomatic description of performance profiles. Furthermore, we give a fixed schematic form for these axiomatic descriptions. Finally, we apply our proposal to a number of realistic problem-solving methods, namely hierarchical classification (used in MDX), and parametric design methods from XCON and VT.

(PDF paper, 80Kb)

@InProceedings{ECAI00,
  author =       "F. van Harmelen and A. ten Teije",
  title =        "Describing Problem Solving Methods 
                  using Anytime Performance profiles",
  booktitle =    "Proceedings of {ECAI}'00",
  year =         2000,
  pages =        "181--186",
  address =      "Berlin",
  month =        "August",
  keywords = {Approximate Reasoning},
  urlPaper = "http://www.cs.vu.nl/~frankh/postscript/ECAI00.pdf"
}

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