The thought experiment approach to qualitative physics

Authors:
David L. Hibler;Gautam Biswas
Affiliations:
Department of Computer Science, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC;Department of Computer Science, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN
Venue:
IJCAI'89 Proceedings of the 11th international joint conference on Artificial intelligence - Volume 2
Year:
1989

Citing 5
Cited 0

A qualitative physics based on confluences

Artificial Intelligence - Special volume on qualitative reasoning about physical systems
Qualitative process theory

Artificial Intelligence - Special volume on qualitative reasoning about physical systems
Qualitative simulation

Artificial Intelligence
The use of aggregation in causal simulation

Artificial Intelligence
Comparative analysis

Artificial Intelligence

Quantified Score

Hi-index	0.01

Visualization

Abstract

This paper discusses the application of the thought experiment methodology to qualitative reasoning. Problem solving using this technique involves simplification of the original problem, solution of the simplified problem, and generalization of the results obtained. Our emphasis in this work is to demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach in addressing complexity and grain size issues that affect qualitative simulation. The thought experiment methodology is presented formally, the implementation of a problem solver called TEPS is briefly discussed, and the methodology is compared with related techniques such as approximation, aggregation, and exaggeration.