A heuristic program to solve geometric-analogy problems

  • Authors:
  • Thomas G. Evans

  • Affiliations:
  • Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratories (OAR), Bedford, Massachusetts

  • Venue:
  • AFIPS '64 (Spring) Proceedings of the April 21-23, 1964, spring joint computer conference
  • Year:
  • 1964

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Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to describe a program now in existence which is capable of solving a wide class of the so-called 'geometric-analogy' problems frequently encountered on intelligence tests. Each member of this class of problems consists of a set of labeled line drawings. The task to be performed can be concisely described by the question: 'figure A is to figure B as figure C is to which of the given answer figures?' For example, given the problem illustrated as Fig. 1, the geometric-analogy program (which we shall subsequently call ANALOGY, for brevity) selected the problem figure labeled 4 as its answer. It seems safe to say that most people would agree with ANALOGY's answer to this problem (which, incidentally, is taken from the 1942 edition of the Psychological Test for College Freshmen of the American Council on Education). Furthermore, if one were required to make explicit the reasoning by which he arrived at his answer, prospects are good that the results would correspond closely to the description of its 'reasoning' produced by ANALOGY.