[Jurassic Referee]

Originally posted by assignmentmaker
The following refers to forward-chaining logic - logic which is data-driven. The opposite, backward-chaining is so-called goal-driven logic. The 'rules' of basketball apply both systems willy-nilly. I am sympathetic towards those who would like there to be an answer to every 'situation' - but, unsurprisingly, there isn't.

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A number of conflict resolution strategies are typically used to decide which rule to fire. These include:

Don't fire a rule twice on the same data. We don't want to keep on adding to working memory.

Fire rules on more recent working memory elements before older ones. This allows the system to follow through a single chain of reasoning, rather than keeping on drawing new conclusions from old data.

Fire rules with more specific preconditions before ones with more general preconditions. This allows us to deal with non-standard cases. If, for example, we have a rule ``IF (bird X) THEN ADD (flies X)'' and another rule ``IF (bird X) AND (penguin X) THEN ADD (swims X)'' and a penguin called tweety, then we would fire the second rule first and start to draw conclusions from the fact that tweety swims.

These strategies may help in getting reasonable behaviour from a forward chaining system, but the most important thing is how we write the rules. They should be carefully constructed, with the preconditions specifying as precisely as possible when different rules should fire. Otherwise we will have little idea or control of what will happen.

Thanks, Alison . . .

What color is the sky in your world?

Sheer freaking bafflegab!