1 research outputs found
Simulated induction & its application to botanical key generation
The dissatisfaction expressed by taxonomists with the results
obtained from automatic key-generation methodologies
employing deductive logic led to an examination of interactive
key generation methodologies employing inductive logic.
Philosophical and psychological aspects of induction were
examined to ensure that the resulting methodology would be
philosophically and psychologically acceptable, and a case was
made that such methods would in fact be more widely
understood in the community than deductively-based
methodologies. The effects of the discussion on the debate about
the existence of artificial intelligence and the problems of
obtaining rules for expert systems were noted, and a
computerised methodology implemented. The results of applying
this methodology to Tasmanian data obtained from
measurements of specimens of the Acaena complex and
Danthonia genus were compared with several competing
methodologies, namely clustering, neural networks, discriminant
analysis, a paper-based key produced by a domain expert and
entropy-based methodologies. The results obtained were either
similar or superior to the competing methodologies; perhaps
because the methodology implemented combined the strengths
of each of the participants, i.e. the tireless calculating ability of
the computer with the background knowledge and common
sense of the domain expert. With some types of data, the
methodology was also less computationally intensive than some
competing methodologies