Copy Link
Add to Bookmark
Report
AIList Digest Volume 2 Issue 007
AIList Digest Tuesday, 17 Jan 1984 Volume 2 : Issue 7
Today's Topics:
Production Systems - Requests,
Expert Systems - Software Debugging Aid,
Logic Programming - Prolog Textbooks & Disjunction Problem,
Alert - Fermat's Last Theorem Proven?,
Seminars - Mulitprocessing Lisp & Lisp History,
Conferences - Logic Programming Discount & POPL'84,
Courses - PSU's First AI Course & Net AI Course
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 11 Jan 1984 1151-PST
From: Jay <JAY@USC-ECLC>
Subject: Request for production systems
I would like pointers to free or public domain production systems
(running on Tops-20, Vax-Unix, or Vax-Vms) both interpreters (such as
ross) and systems built up on them (such as emycin). I am especially
interested in Rosie, Ross, Ops5, and Emycin. Please reply directly to
me.
j'
ARPA: jay@eclc
------------------------------
Date: Thu 12 Jan 84 12:13:20-MST
From: Stanley T. Shebs <SHEBS@UTAH-20.ARPA>
Subject: Taxonomy of Production Systems
I'm looking for info on a formal taxonomy of production rule systems,
sufficiently precise that it can distinguish OPS5 from YAPS, but also say
that they're more similar than either of them is to Prolog. The only
relevant material I've seen is the paper by Davis & King in MI 8, which
characterizes PSs in terms of syntax, complexity of LHS and RHS, control
structure, and "programmability" (seems to mean meta-rules). This is
a start, but too vague to be implemented. A formal taxonomy should
indicate where "holes" exist, that is, strange designs that nobody has
built. Also, how would Georgeff's (Stanford STAN-CS-79-716) notion of
"controlled production systems" fit in? He showed that CPSs are more
general than PSs, but then one can also show that any CPS can be represented
by some ordinary PS. I'm particularly interested in formalization of
the different control strategies - are text order selection (as in Prolog)
and conflict resolution (as in OPS5) mutually exclusive, or can they be
intermixed (perhaps using text order to find 5 potential rules, then
conflict resolution to choose among the 5). Presumably a sufficiently
precise taxonomy could answer these sorts of questions. Has anyone
looked at these questions?
stan shebs
------------------------------
Date: 16 Jan 84 19:13:21 PST (Monday)
From: Ron Newman <Newman.es@PARC-MAXC.ARPA>
Subject: Expert systems for software debugging?
Debugging is a black art, not at all algorithmic, but almost totally
heuristic. There is a lot of expert knowledge around about how to debug
faulty programs, but it is rarely written down or systemetized. Usually
it seems to reside solely in the minds of a few "debugging whizzes".
Does anyone know of an expert system that assists in software debugging?
Or any attempts (now or in the past) to produce such an expert?
/Ron
------------------------------
Date: 12 Jan 84 20:43:31-PST (Thu)
From: harpo!floyd!clyde!akgua!sb1!mb2c!uofm-cv!lah @ Ucb-Vax
Subject: prolog reference
Article-I.D.: uofm-cv.457
Could anybody give some references to good introductory book
on prolog?
------------------------------
Date: 14 Jan 84 14:50:57-PST (Sat)
From: decvax!duke!mcnc!unc!bts @ Ucb-Vax
Subject: Re: prolog reference
Article-I.D.: unc.6594
There's only one introductory book I know of, that's Clocksin
and Mellish's "Programming in Prolog", Springer-Verlag, 1981.
It's a silver paperback, probably still under $20.00.
For more information on the language, try Clark and Tarnlund's
"Logic Programming", Academic Press, 1982. It's a white hard-
back, with an elephant on the cover. The papers by Bruynooghe
and by Mellish tell a lot about Prolog inplementation.
Bruce Smith, UNC-Chapel Hill
decvax!duke!unc!bts (USENET)
bts.unc@CSnet-Relay (lesser NETworks)
------------------------------
Date: 13 Jan 84 8:11:49-PST (Fri)
From: hplabs!hao!seismo!philabs!sbcs!debray @ Ucb-Vax
Subject: re: trivial reasoning problem?
Article-I.D.: sbcs.572
Re: Marcel Schoppers' problem: given two lamps A and B, such that:
condition 1) at least one of them is on at any time; and
condition 2) if A is on then B id off,
we are to enumerate the possible configurations without an exhaustive
generate-and-test strategy.
The following "pure" Prolog program that will generate the various
configurations without exhaustively generating all possible combinations:
config(A, B) :- cond1(A, B), cond2(A, B). /* both conditions must hold */
cond1(1, _). /* at least one is on an any time ... condition 1 above */
cond1(_, 1).
cond2(1, 0). /* if A is on then B is off */
cond2(0, _). /* if A is off, B's value is a don't care */
executing Prolog gives:
| ?- config(A, B).
A = 1
B = 0 ;
A = 0
B = 1 ;
no
| ?- halt.
[ Prolog execution halted ]
Tracing the program shows that the configuration "A=0, B=0" is not generated.
This satisfies the "no-exhaustive-listing" criterion. Note that attempting
to encode the second condition above using "not" will be both (1) not pure
Horn Clause, and (2) using exhaustive generation and filtering.
Saumya Debray
Dept. of Computer Science
SUNY at Stony Brook
{floyd, bunker, cbosgd, mcvax, cmcl2}!philabs!
\
Usenet: sbcs!debray
/
{allegra, teklabs, hp-pcd, metheus}!ogcvax!
CSNet: debray@suny-sbcs@CSNet-Relay
[Several other messages discussing this problem and suggesting Prolog
code were printed in the Prolog Digest. Different writers suggested
very different ways of structuring the problem. -- KIL]
------------------------------
Date: Fri 13 Jan 84 11:16:21-CST
From: Clive Dawson <CC.Clive@UTEXAS-20.ARPA>
Subject: Fermat's Last Theorem Proven?
[Reprinted from the UTEXAS-20 bboard.]
There was a report last night on National Public Radio's All Things Considered
about a British mathematician named Arnold Arnold who claims to have
developed a new technique for dealing with multi-variable, high-dimensional
spaces. The method apparently makes generation of large prime numbers
very easy, and has applications in genetics, the many-body problem, orbital
mechanics, etc. Oh yeah, the proof to Fermat's Last Theorem falls out of
this as well! The guy apparently has no academic credentials, and refuses
to publish in the journals because he's interested in selling his technique.
There was another mathematician named Jeffrey Colby who had been allowed
to examine Arnold's work on the condition he didn't disclose anything.
He claims the technique is all it's claimed to be, and shows what can
be done when somebody starts from pure ignorance not clouded with some
of the preconceptions of a formal mathematical education.
If anybody hears more about this, please pass it along.
Clive
------------------------------
Date: 12 Jan 84 2350 PST
From: Rod Brooks <ROD@SU-AI>
Subject: Next week's CSD Colloquium.
[Reprinted from the SU-SCORE bboard.]
Dr. Richard P. Gabriel, Stanford CSD
``Queue-based Multi-processing Lisp''
4:30pm Terman Auditorium, Jan 17th.
As the need for high-speed computers increases, the need for
multi-processors will be become more apparent. One of the major stumbling
blocks to the development of useful multi-processors has been the lack of
a good multi-processing language---one which is both powerful and
understandable to programmers.
Among the most compute-intensive programs are artificial intelligence (AI)
programs, and researchers hope that the potential degree of parallelism in
AI programs is higher than in many other applications. In this talk I
will propose a version of Lisp which is multi-processed. Unlike other
proposed multi-processing Lisps, this one will provide only a few very
powerful and intuitive primitives rather than a number of parallel
variants of familiar constructs.
The talk will introduce the language informally, and many examples along
with performance results will be shown.
------------------------------
Date: 13 January 1984 07:36 EST
From: Kent M Pitman <KMP @ MIT-MC>
Subject: What is Lisp today and how did it get that way?
[Reprinted from the MIT-MC bboard.]
Modern Day Lisp
Time: 3:00pm
Date: Wednesdays and Fridays, 18-27 January
Place: 8th Floor Playroom
The Lisp language has changed significantly in the past 5 years. Modern
Lisp dialects bear only a superficial resemblance to each other and to
their common parent dialects.
Why did these changes come about? Has progress been made? What have we
learned in 5 hectic years of rapid change? Where is Lisp going?
In a series of four lectures, we'll be surveying a number of the key
features that characterize modern day Lisps. The current plan is to touch
on at least the following topics:
Scoping. The move away from dynamic scoping.
Namespaces. Closures, Locales, Obarrays, Packages.
Objects. Actors, Capsules, Flavors, and Structures.
Signals. Errors and other unusual conditions.
Input/Output. From streams to window systems.
The discussions will be more philosophical than technical. We'll be
looking at several Lisp dialects, not just one. These lectures are not
just something for hackers. They're aimed at just about anyone who uses
Lisp and wants an enhanced appreciation of the issues that have shaped
its design and evolution.
As it stands now, I'll be giving all of these talks, though there
is some chance there will be some guest lecturers on selected
topics. If you have questions or suggestions about the topics to be
discussed, feel free to contact me about them.
Kent Pitman (KMP@MC)
NE43-826, x5953
------------------------------
Date: Wed 11 Jan 84 16:55:02-PST
From: PEREIRA@SRI-AI.ARPA
Subject: IEEE Logic Programming Symposium (update)
1984 International Symposium on
Logic Programming
Student Registration Rates
In our original symposium announcements, we failed to offer a student
registration rate. We would like to correct that situation now.
Officially enrolled students may attend the symposium for the reduced
rate of $75.00.
This rate includes the symposium itself (all three days) and one copy
of the symposium proceedings. It does not include the tutorial, the
banquet, or cocktail parties. It does however, include the Casino
entertainment show.
Questions and requests for registration forms by US mail to:
Doug DeGroot Fernando Pereira
Program Chairman SRI International
IBM Research or 333 Ravenswood Ave.
P.O. Box 218 Menlo Park, CA 94025
Yorktown Heights, NY 10598 (415) 859-5494
(914) 945-3497
or by net mail to:
PEREIRA@SRI-AI (ARPANET)
...!ucbvax!PEREIRA@SRI-AI (UUCP)
------------------------------
Date: Tue 10 Jan 84 15:54:09-MST
From: Subra <Subrahmanyam@UTAH-20.ARPA>
Subject: *** P O P L 1984 --- Announcement ***
******************************* POPL 1984 *********************************
ELEVENTH ANNUAL
ACM SIGACT/SIGPLAN
SYMPOSIUM ON
PRINCIPLES OF
PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
*** POPL 1984 will be held in Salt Lake City, Utah January 15-18. ****
(The skiing is excellent, and the technical program threatens to match it!)
For additional details, please contact
Prof. P. A. Subrahmanyam
Department of Computer Science
University of Utah
Salt Lake City, Utah 84112.
Phone: (801)-581-8224
ARPANET: Subrahmanyam@UTAH-20 (or Subra@UTAH-20)
------------------------------
Date: 12 Jan 84 4:51:51-PST (Thu)
From:
Subject: Re: PSU's First AI Course - Comment
Article-I.D.: sjuvax.108
I would rather NOT get into social issues of AI: there are millions of
forums for that (and I myself have all kinds of feelings and reservations
on the issue, including Vedantic interpretations), so let us keep this
one technical, please.
------------------------------
Date: 13 Jan 84 11:42:21-PST (Fri)
From:
Subject: Net AI course -- the communications channel
Article-I.D.: psuvax.413
Responses so far have strongly favored my creating a moderated newsgroup
as a sub to net.ai for this course. Most were along these lines:
From: ukc!srlm (S.R.L.Meira)
I think you should act as the moderator, otherwise there would be too
much noise - in the sense of unordered information and discussions -
and it could finish looking like just another AI newsgroup argument.
Anybody is of course free to post whatever they want if they feel
the thing is not coming out like they want.
Also, if the course leads to large volume, many net.ai readers (busy AI
professionals rather than students) might drop out of net.ai.
For a contrasting position:
From: cornell!nbires!stcvax!lat
I think the course should be kept as a newsgroup. I don't think
it will increase the nation-wide phone bills appreciably beyond
what already occurs due to net.politics, net.flame, net.religion
and net.jokes.
So HERE's how I'll try to keep EVERYBODY happy ... :-)
... a "three-level" communication channel. 1: a "free-for-all" via mail
(or possibly another newsgroup), 2: a moderated newsgroup sub to net.ai,
3: occasional abstracts, summaries, pointers posted to net.ai and AIList.
People can then choose the extent of their involvement and set their own
"bull-rejection threshold". (1) allows extensive involvement and flaming,
(2) would be the equivalent of attending a class, and (3) makes whatever
"good stuff" evolves from the course available to all others.
The only remaining question: should (1) be done via a newsgroup or mail?
Please send in your votes -- I'll make the final decision next week.
Now down to the REALLY BIG decisions: names. I suggest "net.ai.cse"
for level (2). The "cse" can EITHER mean "Computer Science Education"
or abbreviate "course". For level (1), how about "net.ai.ffa" for
"free-for-all", or .raw, or .disc, or .bull, or whatever.
Whatever I create gets zapped at end of course (June), unless by then it
has taken on a life of its own.
-- Bob
[PS to those NOT ON USENET: please mail me your address for private
mailings -- and indicate which of the three "participation levels"
best suits your tastes.]
Bob Giansiracusa (Dept of Computer Science, Penn State Univ, 814-865-9507)
UUCP: bobgian@psuvax.UUCP -or- allegra!psuvax!bobgian
Arpa: bobgian@PSUVAX1 -or- bobgian%psuvax1.bitnet@Berkeley
Bitnet: bobgian@PSUVAX1.BITNET CSnet: bobgian@penn-state.csnet
USnail: 333 Whitmore Lab, Penn State Univ, University Park, PA 16802
------------------------------
End of AIList Digest
********************
