Verifying, validating, and measuring the performance of expert systems

摘要

The use of expert systems has increased rapidly during the last few years. There is a growing need for systematic and reliable techniques for evaluating both expert system shells and complete expert systems. In this paper, we discuss evaluation strategies from several points of view: classification, validation, verification, and performance analysis. We note that ther are several respects in which expert system evaluation is similar to software evaluation in general and, consequently, that it may be possible to apply established software engineering techniques to expert system evaluation. In particular, formal analysis is replacing (or enhancing) traditional testing of conventional software. We believe that increasing formalization is an important trend and we indicate ways in which it could be carried further.