Chapter 5:

Inexact Reasoning

Expert Systems: Principles and

Programming, Fourth Edition
 Objectives

• Explore the sources of uncertainty in rules

• Analyze some methods for dealing with
uncertainty
• Learn about the Dempster-Shafer theory
• Learn about the theory of uncertainty based on
fuzzy logic
• Discuss some commercial applications of fuzzy
logic

Expert Systems: Principles and Programming, Fourth Edition 2

 Uncertainty and Rules

• We have already seen that expert systems can

operate within the realm of uncertainty.

• There are several sources of uncertainty in rules:

– Uncertainty related to individual rules
– Uncertainty due to conflict resolution
– Uncertainty due to incompatibility of rules

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 Figure 5.1 Major Uncertainties in
Rule-Based Expert Systems

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 Figure 5.2 Uncertainties in
Individual Rules

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 Figure 5.3 Uncertainty Associated
with the Compatibilities of Rules

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 Figure 5.4 Uncertainty Associated
with Conflict Resolution

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 Goal of Knowledge Engineer

• The knowledge engineer endeavors to minimize,

or eliminate, uncertainty if possible.

• Minimizing uncertainty is part of the verification

of rules.

• Verification is concerned with the correctness of

the system’s building blocks – rules.

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 Verification vs. Validation

• Even if all the rules are correct, it does not

necessarily mean that the system will give the
correct answer.
• Verification refers to minimizing the local
uncertainties.
• Validation refers to minimizing the global
uncertainties of the entire expert system.
• Uncertainties are associated with creation of rules
and also with assignment of values.

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 Ad Hoc Methods

• The ad hoc introduction of formulas such as

fuzzy logic to a probabilistic system introduces a
problem.
• The expert system lacks the sound theoretical
foundation based on classical probability.
• The danger of ad hoc methods is the lack of
complete theory to guide the application or warn
of inappropriate situations.

Expert Systems: Principles and Programming, Fourth Edition 10

 Sources of Uncertainty

• Potential contradiction of rules – the rules may

fire with contradictory consequents, possibly as a
result of antecedents not being specified properly.

• Subsumption of rules – one rules is subsumed by

another if a portion of its antecedent is a subset of
another rule.

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 Uncertainty in Conflict
Resolution
• There is uncertainty in conflict resolution with
regard to priority of firing and may depend on a
number of factors, including:
– Explicit priority rules
– Implicit priority of rules
• Specificity of patterns
• Recency of facts matching patterns
• Ordering of patterns
– Lexicographic
– Means-Ends Analysis
• Ordering that rules are entered

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 Certainty Factors

• Another method of dealing with uncertainty uses

certainty factors, originally developed for the
MYCIN expert system.

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 Difficulties with Bayesian Method

• The Bayesian method is useful in medicine /

geology because we are determining the
probability of a specific event (disease / location
of mineral deposit), given certain symptoms /
analyses.
• The problem is with the difficulty / impossibility
of determining the probabilities of these givens –
symptoms / analyses.
• Evidence tends to accumulate over time.

Expert Systems: Principles and Programming, Fourth Edition 14

 Measures of Belief and Disbelief

• The certainty factor, CF, is a way of combining

belief and disbelief into a single number.

• This has two uses:

1. The certainty factor can be used to rank hypotheses
in order of importance.
2. The certainty factor indicates the net belief in a
hypothesis based on some evidence.

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 Certainty Factor Values

• Positive CF – evidence supports the hypothesis

• CF = 1 – evidence definitely proves the
hypothesis
• CF = 0 – there is no evidence or the belief and
disbelief completely cancel each other.
• Negative CF – evidence favors negation of the
hypothesis – more reason to disbelieve the
hypothesis than believe it

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 Difficulties with Certainty
Factors
• In MYCIN, which was very successful in
diagnosis, there were difficulties with theoretical
foundations of certain factors.
• There was some basis for the CF values in
probability theory and confirmation theory, but
the CF values were partly ad hoc.
• Also, the CF values could be the opposite of
conditional probabilities.

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 Dempster-Shafer Theory

• The Dempster-Shafer Theory is a method of

inexact reasoning.

• It is based on the work of Dempster who

attempted to model uncertainty by a range of
probabilities rather than a single probabilistic
number.

Expert Systems: Principles and Programming, Fourth Edition 18

 Dempster-Shafer

1. The Dempster-Shafer theory assumes that there

is a fixed set of mutually exclusive and
exhaustive elements called environment and
symbolized by the Greek letter Θ :
Θ = {h1, h2, …, hN}

2. where hi is called a hypothesis or proposition.

A hypothesis can be any subset of the frame.

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 Dempster-Shafer

• Consider the following:

h = {rowboat, sailboat, destroyer, aircraft carrier}

• These are all mutually exclusive elements

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 Dempster-Shafer

• Consider the question:

“What are the military boats?”

• The answer would be a subset of Θ :

{h3, h4} = {destroyer, aircraft carrier}

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 Dempster-Shafer

• Consider the question:

“What boat is powered by oars?”

• The answer would also be a subset of Θ :

{h1} = {rowboat}

This set is called a singleton because it contains

only one element.

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 Dempster-Shafer

• Each of these subsets of Θ is a possible answer to

the question, but there can be only one correct
answer.

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 Dempster-Shafer

• An environment is called a frame of discernment

when its elements may be interpreted as possible
answers and only one answer is correct.

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 Approximate Reasoning
• This is theory of uncertainty based on fuzzy logic
and concerned with quantifying and reasoning
using natural language where words have
ambiguous meaning.
• Fuzzy logic is a superset of conventional logic –
extended to handle partial truth.
• Soft-computing means computing not based on
classical two-valued logics – includes fuzzy
logic, neural networks, and probabilistic
reasoning.
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 Summary

• In this chapter, non-classical probability theories

of uncertainty were discussed.
• Certainty factors, Dempster-Shafer and fuzzy
theory are ways of dealing with uncertainty in
expert systems.
• Certainty factors are simple to implement where
inference chains are short (e.g. MYCIN)
• Certainty factors are not generally valid for
longer inference chains.

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 Summary

• Dempster-Shafer theory has a rigorous

foundation and is used for expert systems.

• Fuzzy theory is the most general theory of

uncertainty formulated to date and has wide
applicability due to the extension principle.

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