KNOWLEDGE-BASED DECISION TREE GENERATION

A SYSTEM IS PROPOSED FOR THE UTILIZATION OF EXPERT KNOW- KNOWLEDGE TO GENERATE HIGHLY EFFICIENT SOLUTIONS TO DECISIONMAKING PROBLEMS. STARTING FROM EITHER A PRODUCTION RULE OR A DECISION TREE REPRESENTATION OF THE PROBLEM, AS SUPPLIED BY A SYSTEM DESIGNER, THE EXPERT DECISION TREE GENERATOR SYSTEM CAN PRODUCE AN EFFICIENT DECISION TREE REPRESENTATION THE USER CAN THEN EXPLORE SOME OF THE POSSIBLE OPTIMAL SOLUTIONS TO THE PROBLEM, CHOOSING THE CONSIDERED BEST SUITED FOR THE PARTICULAR APPLICATION. THE SYSTEM IS ALSO CAPABLE OF GENERATING HIGH-LEVEL LANGUAGE CODE (C OR ADA) THAT IMPLEMENTS A DECISION TREE REPRESENTATION. THE PUR- POSE OF THIS INVESTIGATION IS TO DEVELOP & IMPLEMENT A SET OF ALGORITHNS THAT CAN BE USED FOR THE SYNTACTIC MANIPULA- TION OF DECISION TREES AND THE GENERATION OF ALL THE OPTIMALFORMS OF A DICISION TREE. THESE ALGORITHMS ARE ALSO CAPABLEOF HANDLING TERMS IN DECISION THEORIES WITH BOTH DEPENDEN- CIES AND VARIABLES. THE RESULT IS A PROBLEM-SOLVING AP- PROACH WHERE CONCEPTUAL AND EXPERT KNOWLEDGE RATHER THAN HEURISTIC ARE THE DRIVING FORCE IN THE DESIGN AND IMPLEMEN- TATION OF EFFICIENT DECISION-MAKING PROCESSES.