International Business Machines Corporation
EXPERT SYSTEM ENRICHMENT THROUGH RULE REFINEMENT

Abstract:

A system, computer program product, and method are presented for enriching existing legacy expert systems through refinement of existing rules therein. The method includes identifying a legacy expert system to be enriched, relevant training data, existing rules embedded within the legacy expert system, and, for each existing rule, one or more antecedent factors. The method also includes determining the existing rules do not meet a threshold value for established quality requirements, thereby identifying one or more low-quality rules. The method further includes identifying frequent sets of antecedent factors associated with each low-quality rule, where each frequent set of antecedent factors is established as a frequent set through at least meeting a threshold frequency of occurrence within the training data. The method also includes comparing the antecedent factors of each existing rule with the frequent sets of antecedent factors, and enriching the legacy expert system through refining the existing rules.