Design for Acquisition: Principles of Knowledge-system Design to Facilitate Knowledge Acquisition
Thomas R. Gruber and Paul R. Cohen (1987). Design for Acquisition: Principles of Knowledge-system Design to Facilitate Knowledge Acquisition. International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, Volume 26 , Issue 2 (February 1987), pp 143-159.
Early attempt at a software engineering methodology for knowledge acquisition.
Abstract:
The problem of knowledge acquisition is viewed in terms of the incongruity between the representational formalisms provided by an implementation (e.g. production rules) and the formulation of problem-solving knowledge by experts. The thesis of this paper is that knowledge systems can be designed to facilitate knowledge acquisition by reducing representation mismatch. Principles of design for acquisition are presented and applied in the design of an architecture for a medical expert system called MUM. It is shown how the design of MUM makes it possible to acquire two kinds of knowledge that are traditionally difficult to acquire from experts: knowledge about evidential combination and knowledge about control. Practical implications for building knowledge-acquisition tools are discussed.
