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Abstract : |
Comparative analysis is applied to a qualitative behavior of an incompletely known mechanism, to determine the effect of a given perturbation on the behavior as a whole. This class of inference is useful in diagnosis, design, planning, and generally for understanding the relations among a set of alternate qualitative behaviors. Comparative analysis depends on information which is implicit, and relatively difficult to extract, from qualitative differential equations. By introducing the definite integral as a descriptive term linking qualitative variables and their landmarks, we show that the qualitative integral representation (QIR) makes the required information easily accessible. Inspired by observations of expert physicists, we have adopted an approach to inference that allows global algebraic manipulation of the QIR. Within this approach, comparative analysis can be decomposed into a search and algebraic manipulation problems. Several detailed examples are presented to clarify our method., |
