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AIList Digest Volume 5 Issue 001
AIList Digest Friday, 2 Jan 1987 Volume 5 : Issue 1
Today's Topics:
Queries - AAAI-87 Workshop Program & Efficient Property Implementation &
Uncertainty Talk & IBM Expert System & Large-Scale Test Suite Tools &
Expert System Shells on Unix and PCDOS & Symbolics/VAX Database &
Proof of Correctness, Hardware Grammar & Everyday Life Survey
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Date: Mon, 22 Dec 86 10:55:21 EST
From: katz@mitre-bedford.ARPA
Subject: AAAI-87 Workshop Program
The AAAI-87 Program Committee invites members to submit proposals for the
Workshop Program--expected to be an important feature of this year's
conference.
Gathering in an informal setting, workshop participants will have the
opportunity to meet and discuss issues with a selected focus. This format
will provide for active exchange among researchers and practioners on topics
of mutual interest. Members from all segments of the AI community are
encouraged to submit proposals for review by the committee.
To encourage interaction and a broad exchange of ideas, the workshops will be
kept small. Attendance will be limited to active participants only. Workshop
sessions will consist of individual presentations, and ample time will be
allotted for general discussion.
Please submit your workshop proposals to:
Joseph Katz
MITRE MS-D070
Burlington Road
Bedford, Massachusetts 01730
or to,
Katz@mitre-bedford.arpa
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 21 Dec 86 11:38:29 ist
From: Ephraim Silverberg <ephraim%techunix.bitnet@WISCVM.WISC.EDU>
Reply-to: ephraim%techunix.bitnet@WISCVM.WISC.EDU
Subject: Efficient Property Implementation
I am looking for papers/projects concerning the implementation (on non-lisp
machines, in particular) of dynamic properties (those properties that can be
added/deleted/altered in objects as the functions: defprop, putprop, remprop
and (get obj prop), do in Franz Lisp) in lisp and other languages.
Please reply by e-mail.
Ephraim Silverberg,
Faculty of Electrical Engineering,
Israel Institute of Technology,
Haifa, Israel.
BITNET : ephraim@techunix
ARPANET : ephraim%techunix.bitnet@wiscvm.arpa
CSNET : ephraim%techunix.bitnet@csnet-relay
UUCP : {almost anywhere}!ucbvax!ephraim@techunix.bitnet
------------------------------
Date: 22 Dec 86 17:38 EST
From: SHAFFER%SCOVCB.decnet@ge-crd.arpa
Subject: Uncertainty Talk
Greetings:
We at GE get the AILIST very late. Every announced seminar
or paper presentation has already taken place by the time we hear
of it. One such seminar was a talk on UNCERTAINTY by CMU professor
Peter Szolouits (sic). Does anyone know if I can get a transcript
of his presentation, or at least a copy of the abstract and paper?
I am working with rule-based systems and uncertainty comes up a
great deal in system design. Thank you for your help.
E. Shaffer, PO Box 8555, Phila, Pa 19101
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Date: 22 Dec 86 15:33:24 GMT
From: j1o%psuvm.bitnet@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU
Subject: IBM Expert System
Has anyone out there got the IBM Expert System offering? If so, I'd like
to know how the FCB's work, and how you can eliminate parts of the search tree.
IBM's docs aren't perfectly clear.
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| -- Jim Owens (814)-898-6250 |
| {akgua,allegra,ihnp4,cbosgd}!psuvax1!psuvm.bitnet!j1o |
| j1o@psuvm (bitnet) |
| j1o@psuerie(bitnet) |
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Date: 23 Dec 86 23:12:50 GMT
From: felix!jim@hplabs.hp.com (Jim Gilbert)
Subject: Large Scale Test Suite Tools Wanted
I would appreciate references to any public domain or commercial packages
designed to facilitate the construction, operation, and maintenance
of script-driven regression testing suites for large-scale software
subsystems.
We desire to systematically exercise complex collections of transaction
processing, data base management, and records management software. We
would like tools to enable us to construct suites of tests which
were capable of running in unattended batch mode, and which produced
reports of the differences observed between expected results and the
results noted. Reports may be produced on the fly or by journaling
responses and comparing them to expected responses later.
The languages used to define test actions and expected responses
should be appropriate and much more productive to use than typical
high-level procedural languages, such as Pascal, FORTRAN, or C.
In our particular application we will be exercising complexes of
hardware and software configured in a LAN configuration. Out first
specific application area is building regression tests for our ISO
level 7 Application Services protocols.
I would also appreciate any pointers to published research on this
general topic.
Thank you kindly.
Jim Gilbert
Senior Consulting Engineer
FileNet Corporation
3530 Hyland Ave.
Costa Mesa, CA 92626 (714) 966-2344
...hplabs!felix!jim
------------------------------
Date: 24 Dec 86 01:29:27 GMT
From: hplabs!felix!fritz!kumar@seismo.CSS.GOV (John Kumar)
Subject: Expert System Shells on Unix and PCDOS
I am looking for an expert system shell that will run both under Unix and
PC-DOS. I need to be able to run it on the VAX with BSD 4.2 or DEC 8700 with
Ultrix and IBM-AT with PC-DOS. I am currently working with INSIGHT2+ from
Level Five Research. This "shell" runs on the IBM-AT and a VAX version
running under VMS is forthcoming from them.
Thanks for your input. In reply to my last request, except perhaps in the
Defence Dept., no work has been done on expert systems for software diagnosis.
Please reply to:
John Kumar
hplabs!felix!kumar
Thanks.
------------------------------
Date: 29 Dec 86 17:17:48 GMT
From: sundc!hqda-ai!merlin@seismo.css.gov (David S. Hayes)
Subject: Symbolics <--> Database
The Army AI Center is working on distribution of new
equipment to the Army, Army Reserve, and National Guard. As
you can imagine, we have enormous amounts of data to play
with. (Know how many different places need rifles?)
We have 12 Symbolics lisp machines, and a VAX-11/780.
The Oracle database is running on the VAX. We would like to
be able to access the database automatically, from inside an
expert-system program, without user intervention. Does
anyone have any software to do this? Has anyone ever tried
it? What did you learn?
We will be doing this ourselves, unless someone out in
net.land has already got a solution they would be willing to
share. If you know someone not on the net who could point
us in the right direction, please pass on their name and
phone number.
Thanks,
--
David S. Hayes, The Merlin of Avalon
PhoneNet: (202) 694-6900
ARPA: merlin%hqda-ai@brl-smoke
UUCP: ...!seismo!sundc!hqda-ai!merlin
------------------------------
Date: 29 Dec 86 16:57:00 EDT
From: wallacerm@afwal-aaa
Reply-to: <wallacerm@afwal-aaa>
Subject: Information on Proof of Correctness, Hardware Grammar
I N T E R O F F I C E M E M O R A N D U M
Date: 29-Dec-1986 04:31pm EST
From: Richard M. Wallace
WALLACERM
Dept: AADE
Tel No: 513-255-8654 (58654)
TO: Remote Addressee ( _MAILER! )
Subject: Material and Information on Proof of Correctness Contacts
Hello,
[...]
I am currently trying to find any work that has been done or is going on in
the areas of Formal Verification, Proof of Correctness, and Functional
Correcness for descriptive grammars in a LALR(1) form. My interest is focused
on analysis of only the descriptive LALR(1) grammar -- which includes
assertions and bounds -- without any annotation to the descriptive grammar.
The particular LALR(1) descriptive grammar that I am using is the Very High
Speed Integrated Circuit Hardware Description Language (VHDL) version 7.2.
This grammar is descriptive, it must be translated to another language that
can be compiled to executable form. VHDL is a structural/behavioral
simulation language for digital circuits. This is an overly brief description
of the language.
I have run across a lot of material on uses of prologs and frame-based shells
for structural circuit analysis, but have not seen any on text analysis for
grammars like the VHDL.
Any help would be appreciated.
Richard Wallace
AFWAL/AADE
WPAFB, OH 45433
513-255-8654
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 28 Dec 86 16:12 EST
From: Philip E. Agre <Agre@OZ.AI.MIT.EDU>
Reply-to: Survey@AI.AI.MIT.EDU
Subject: Everyday life survey
I need volunteers for an experiment. I've spent the last few years
studying small details of everyday routine activity, hoping to use my
observations to constrain theories of cognitive architecture. In doing
so, I've found it useful to write down anecdotes of small episodes from
ordinary activities like making breakfast and driving to work. This
method has some amazing properties. Suppose you've been worrying over,
say, deciding to perform two steps of an activity in a different order
than you have in the past. Then over the next few days, on several
occasions when such a thing occurs you will notice it. No need to
deliberately look out for them (and presumably much better if you
don't). Whenever this happens to me I write it down. Habitually
writing these things down then makes you notice them a LOT more. This
has to be experienced to be believed.
I want to get a lot of people to do this and see what happens. To this
end, I am going to describe two topics I've been interested in and
present some example stories about them. Read these descriptions. Then
when you spontaneously notice an example of them in your own activity,
write a paragraph or two about it. Collect these stories and send them
to Survey@MIT-AI (that's AI.AI.MIT.EDU in fancy notation).
First topic: Small mistakes.
Several psychologists have collected lists of what are often called
"action slips", mistakes one makes in the course of ordinary activity.
In reading these lists, I am always concerned at how remarkable they
are: how interesting or funny or odd. So I'd like to collect examples
of absolutely trivial mistakes of all types, ones that you quickly
recovered from without swearing or pondering or breaking stride. (Doing
so tends to make you think about whether there's a clear difference
between a mistake and something you tried that simply didn't work out.)
Example: I'd tipped my chair backward to lean against a shoulder-high
shelf. I was drinking a cup of tea and reading a book. It was kind of
a pain keeping the cup steady, so I went to put it down. Glancing
about, I found noplace convenient to put it except the shelf. Since my
shoulder was against the shelf, I saw the only way to put the cup on it
was to extend my arm fully. So I did this. I didn't bother watching
where the cup was going, instead I looked back at the book. I extended,
raised, moved back, and lowered my arm, expecting to feel the cup
landing on the shelf. After lowering my arm quite a lot this didn't
happen, so I looked and saw the cup wasn't over the shelf. Watching
this time, I did it again right.
Example: I often take the subway to work. Normally, given a choice, I
get on the train around the middle because the nearest exit from my
station is near the middle of the platform. Except now they're
rebuilding the station and they've closed that exit, as I discovered
yesterday morning. Nonetheless, this morning I got on near the middle
as usual. In fact, I got on more toward the front because there were
free seats in the next car along. I left the station through the main
exit.
Second topic: Anticipatory actions in a cyclic activity.
This happens an awful lot but for some reason there's no word for it.
When you start an activity, you do it in the obvious straightforward
order, but then you start rearranging and parallelizing the steps,
seemingly automatically.
Example: I had a stack of records propped up against a box and I was
alphabetizing it according to the artist's name, forming another,
sorted, stack propped up next to it. I would take a record from the top
of the first stack with my left hand, find and hold open the right place
for it in the second stack with my right hand, place the record in its
space, let the stack close over it, and repeat the cycle. After a while
I found I was doing something different: whereas before my eyes stayed
on the new record until I had picked it up, now I would read the
artist's name as soon as I was done with the last record. Then as I
picked it up with my left hand, my eyes were already helping my right
hand find the right place in the second stack.
Example: I was trying to get a long C program to compile. I was working
on a Sun and had divided the screen between two Unix shell windows so I
wouldn't have to exit and reenter the editor to run the compiler. I'd
run the compiler and it'd get errors, e.g., "syntax error near { on line
173", so I'd go back to the editor window. The only way I knew to get
to line 173 was to go to the top of the buffer and go down 172 lines.
This got to be a cycle, fixing errors and recompiling. After a while, I
found that I would move the editor to the top line before the compiler
had even starting generating error messages. (Finally one time the
compiler completed without errors and half of me had to skid to a
confused halt, but this detail is too amusing to be legal.)
[Try vi command 173G to skip to line 173. And for examples of
trivial little errors, you can't beat switching between vi and
emacs. Don Norman and others have done extensive studies of such
little errors, including the little errors that kill pilots. -- KIL]
Rules.
1. The episodes you write about must happen to you, in the course of
some solitary activity. They must happen after you read this note.
You cannot be aware of having this note or any other AI-ish topic on
your mind when they happen. You must have no memory of having
remarked on that same thing before.
2. They must be utterly mundane. They cannot be markedly stereotypical,
funny, disastrous, or otherwise interesting. They cannot have
occasioned any confusion, amazement, or careful reasoning-through.
3. You must write them down on the same day they happen. Write them
down accurately, being careful not to make them more clear-cut or
to-the-point than they actually were, in plain unscientific English,
the way you'd retell them as a story.
4. Though your descriptions naturally have to include any information
necessary to understand what happened, they cannot include any
speculations about "what was going on in your head" that weren't
definitely part of your experience of the episode at the time. If
you're unsure about some detail, say so.
If this experiment works out well, we can keep doing it periodically.
I suppose I'll write a paper about the experiments someday. Send any
notes requesting a copy to Survey-Request@MIT-AI.
Phil Agre
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End of AIList Digest
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