CPSC 453, Fall 2003                              Information About Test 2
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   The second test for this course will be given in class on Monday,
March 24.  It covers all the course work that we have done since the
previous test.  This includes expert systems and a bit of planning
(Chapter 7 of the text) and MiniMax (pages 144 to 155).  We also read two 
stories by Jorge Luis Borges and an excerpt from "Understanding Computers 
and Cognition."  You should be aware of the issues raised by these 
readings.  In addition, you should have some basic familiarity with the 
CLIPS expert system shell.  Although we will begin Chapter 9 (machine
learning) this week, machine learing is NOT covered on this test.  Here
are some of the important topics for the test:

   production systems
     condition/action rules
     working memory
     recognize/act cycle
     conflict set
   expert systems
     knowledge base
     inference engine
     explanation subsystem
     knowledge engineering
     brittleness
   rule-based expert systems (production systems)
   explanation in rule-based expert systems
   data-driven operation of rule-based systems ("forward chaining")
     can be depth-first, breadth-first, best-first
   goal-driven operation of rule-based systems
   Prolog as a kind of goal-driven production system
   advantages and disadvantages of rule-based expert systems
   CLIPS
     facts and rules
     asserting and retracting facts
     using defrule to define a rule
     patterns and pattern-matching
     variables; anonymous variables
     the agenda, rule activation, and rule firing
     search strategies (depth or breadth) and how they relate to the agenda
     salience of rules
     the reset and run commands
   alternatives to rule-based systems
     case-based reasoning
     model-based reasoning
   planning
     frame problem: actions can have side effects
     sequencing problem: actions can have preconditions
     means-end analysis
     STRIPS:  operators with preconditions, add list, and delete list
   combinatorial explosion problem
   mini-max game playing
     game tree
     alpha-beta pruning
     static evaluation function
   "Pierre Menard" and "Funes the Memorious"
      the problem of meaning
      importance of abstraction
   "Understanding Computers and Cognition"
      blindness
      representing a situation as facts (objects, properties, relations)
      the importance of abstraction
      breakdown
      source of blindness in symbolic AI programs
      human vs. computer response to breakdown
      common sense
      structural coupling between an organism and an environment
      understanding natural language
      the problem of meaning