Introducing Inductive Methods in Knowledge Acquisition By Divide-and-Conquer

Abstract

In this paper we present the outline of a method that combines a divide-and-conquer approach, that is common in knowledge acquisition and software engineering, with the use of inductive techniques. The idea is to guide decomposition of a knowledge acquisition problem into subpr oblems by the expected costs and benefits of applying elicitation or induction t o acquire the knowledge for part of the target knowledge. The method is illustra ted with a "rational reconstruction" of a knowledge acquisition process that involved inductive techniques. Keywords: Knowledge acquisition, learning goals, decomposition Introduction Knowledge acquisition for knowledge-based systems involves the formalisation of human knowledge about a certain task to build a system that can perform this task. Knowledge can be acquired in different ways. The classical way is to elicit knowledge from a human expert and formalise this in an operational language, e.g. using an expert system shell. This is often extende..