Sound and complete qualitative simulation is impossible

  • Authors:

  • A. C. Cem Say;H. Levent Akin

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Computer Engineering, Bogaziçi University, Bebek 34342, Istanbul, Turkey;Department of Computer Engineering, Bogaziçi University, Bebek 34342, Istanbul, Turkey

  • Venue:
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Year:
  • 2003

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Abstract

State-of-the-art qualitative simulators (for instance, QSIM) are known to be sound; no trajectory which is the solution of a concrete equation matching the input can be missing from the output. A simulator which is seen to be incomplete, that is, which produces a spurious prediction for a particular input, can usually be augmented with an additional filter which eliminates that particular class of spurious behaviors, and the question of whether a simulator with purely qualitative input which never predicts spurious behaviors can ever be achieved by adding new filters in this way has remained unanswered until now. We prove that such a sound and complete qualitative simulation algorithm does not exist.