Characterising Problem Solving Methods by gradual requirements:
overcoming the yes/no distinction

Annette ten Teije
Frank van Harmelen

This paper makes two contributions to the study of problem solving methods. First, we extend the current theory on how to characterise problem-solving methods. We show that the current theory is not strong enough, and does not allow the characterisation of many natural problem-solving methods. Secondly, we show that characterisations of problem-solving methods should be stated in gradual terms, and not in terms of yes/no requirements. Such a gradual approach to characterising problem-solving methods allows methods to use domain knowledge that only partially fulfills the requirements, in which case the methods still produce useful, although suboptimal solutions. Problem-solving methods with such gradual behaviour can be applied and re-used in a wider set of circumstances than classically characterised methods.

(PDF paper, 243Kb)

@InProceedings{KAW98,
  author =	"Frank van Harmelen and Annette ten Teije",
  title =	"Characterising Problem Solving Methods by gradual requirements",
  booktitle = "Proceedings of the Eleventh Workshop on Knowledge Acquisition for
               Knowledge-Based Systems (KAW'98)",
  year =      "1998",
  date =      "April",
  address =   "Banff, Alberta",
  keywords = {Approximate Reasoning},
  urlPaper = "http://www.cs.vu.nl/~frankh/postscript/KAW98.pdf"
}

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