This paper is concerned with modeling the nature of expertise and its role in society in relation to research on expert systems and enterprise models. It argues for the adoption of a collective stance in which the human species is viewed as a single organism recursively partitioned in space and time into sub-organisms that are similar to the whole. These parts include societies, organizations, groups, individuals, roles, and neurological functions. Notions of expertise arise because the organism adapts as a whole through adaptation of its interacting parts. The phenomena of expertise correspond to those leading to distribution of tasks and functional differentiation of the parts. The mechanism is one of positive feedback from parts of the organism allocating resources for action to other parts on the basis of those latter parts past performance of similar activities. Distribution and differentiation follow if performance is rewarded, and low performers of tasks, being excluded by the f...

page 14 Declaration - page 15 Notes of copyright and the ownership of intellectual property rights - page 15 The Author - page 16 Acknowledgements - page 16 1 - Introduction - page 17 1.1 - Background - page 17 1.2 - The Style of Approach - page 18 1.3 - Motivation - page 19 1.4 - Style of Presentation - page 20 1.5 - Outline of the Thesis - page 21 2 - Models and Modelling - page 23 2.1 - Some Types of Models - page 25 2.2 - Combinations of Models - page 28 2.3 - Parts of the Modelling Apparatus - page 33 2.4 - Models in Machine Learning - page 38 2.5 - The Philosophical Background to the Rest of this Thesis - page 41 Syntactic Measures of Complexity - page 3 - 3 - Problems and Properties - page 44 3.1 - Examples of Common Usage - page 44 3.1.1 - A case of nails - page 44 3.1.2 - Writing a thesis - page 44 3.1.3 - Mathematics - page 44 3.1.4 - A gas - page 44 3.1.5 - An ant hill - page 45 3.1.6 - A car engine - page 45 3.1.7 - A cell as part of an organism -...

The problem of transforming the knowledge bases of expert systems using induced rules or decision trees into comprehensible knowledge structures is addressed. A knowledge structure is developed that generalizes and subsumes production rules, decision trees, and rules with exceptions. It gives rise to a natural complexity measure that allows them to be understood, analyzed and compared on a uniform basis. The structure is a directed acyclic graph with the semantics that nodes are premises, some of which have attached conclusions, and the arcs are inheritance links with disjunctive multiple inheritance. A detailed example is given of the generation of a range of such structures of equivalent performance for a simple problem, and the complexity measure of a particular structure is shown to relate to its perceived complexity. The simplest structures are generated by an algorithm that factors common sub-premises from the premises of rules. A more complex example of a chess dataset is used t...

A methodology for the modeling of large data sets is described which results in rule sets having minimal inter-rule interactions, and being simply maintained. An algorithm for developing such rule sets automatically is described and its efficacy shown with standard test data sets. Comparative studies of manual and automatic modeling of a data set of some nine thousand five hundred cases are reported. A study is reported in which ten years of patient data have been modeled on a month by month basis to determine how well a diagnostic system developed by automated induction would have performed had it been in use throughout the project.

System-theoretic accounts of the epistemological processes underlying knowledge acquisition have been shown to apply to both individual human behavior and social development processes, and to enable algorithms to be developed for computer-based systems modeling. Such accounts are applicable to the upper levels of the hierarchy of autonomous systems to provide models of socio-economic behavior. In this paper they are applied to the development of information technology, and used to account for past events and predict future trends in relevant industries such as computing and genetic engineering. Underlying all developments in information technology is a tiered succession of learning curves which make up the infrastructure of the relevant industries. The paper provides a framework for the industries based on this logical progression of developments. It links this empirically to key events in the development of computing and genetic engineering. It links it theoretically to a model of eco...

Experts may be modeled as managing the inductive dynamics of knowledge acquisition in the knowledge processes of society. Who becomes an expert may be modeled as a random process under the influence of strong positive feedback loops in the social mechanisms giving access to knowledge. These models have implications for the design of expert systems.

ferent interactive systems designs. For the first we compare two versions of a graphical operating system: we suggest that the changes between the versions indicate that the designers recognised the problems we discuss, but that their solutions are cosmetic. A more formal approach to design would have resulted in deeper solutions. The second example is more baffling: a microwave cooker whose user interface design has been unchanged for several years. We find that, again, the manufacturers recognise the interface problem we identify --- but their approach is not to change the interface itself but to change user manuals. This is more clearly a purely cosmetic solution. We know that design is difficult (we discuss this more fully below); the case studies we give here suggest that that poor initial design is not fixed at a later stage. We subsequently show that many problems are anyway too subtle to be detected by practical experiments (hence iterative design is insufficient). It is also

this paper discusses some of the empirical problems connected with natural languages' essentially varying and vague meanings, how these can be analysed statistically from discourse data, and represented formally as fuzzy system of vocabulary mappings. Some examples computed from East- and West-German newspaper texts will be to illustrate the approach's feasibility. 1 INTRODUCTION

in the modeling of natural phenomena

This paper presents a conceptual framework for complex systems of computers and people. Distinctions between technology and people, and between computers and non-programmed technology, are analyzed. This analysis is used to show how various forms of analogy and abstraction may be used to derive design principles for person-computer interaction. The analysis is extended to include relations between system structure and behavior, and used to develop a hierarchical model of the protocols in person-computer systems. 1