Contemporary Artificial Intelligence

Chapter 5

P r o b a b ility

As discussed in Chapter 2, it is reasonable to model a good deal of human

reasoning under certainty using logic. This model led to the development of rule-

based systems that use the inference engines forward chaining and backward

chaining. For example, it is reasonable to postulate that Mary the botanist

has the following rule or item of knowledge stored in her personal data bank of

knowledge:

IF stem is woody

THEN type is tree.

Furthermore, if Mary were determining the family of a particular plant, it is

plausible that she would reason in a way similar to the decision tree in Figure

2.2, which is the equivalent of backward ...