Skip to main content

Understanding complex systems through examples: A framework for qualitative example finding

Johnson, Colin G. (2001) Understanding complex systems through examples: A framework for qualitative example finding. Systems Research and Information Systems, 10 (3-4). pp. 239-267. (KAR id:13635)

Abstract

Many complex information systems in science, business and design have the characteristic that we can classify objects in the system in some way, but that these classifications are distributed through a parameter space in some complex fashion. In order for a human to get an understanding of the system, we would like to present this user with one example of an object for each class. Examples of such problems can be found in information retrieval, bioinformatics, computational geometry, computer-aided design, software testing and cellular automata. In this paper we will show how problems in all these areas can be put into a general framework of finding qualitative examples, and argue that general heuristic approaches to this type of problem are an important and neglected area of machine learning. We contrast this with some other well-studied problems, showing how this problem is distinct and investigating what we can learn from these problems. We then discuss some of the requirements for a heuristic to solve these problems, and mention some recent work on this using genetic algorithms.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled keywords: heuristics, classification, novelty, diversity, information systems, machine learning
Subjects: Q Science > QA Mathematics (inc Computing science) > QA 76 Software, computer programming,
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Computing, Engineering and Mathematical Sciences > School of Computing
Depositing User: Mark Wheadon
Date Deposited: 24 Nov 2008 17:59 UTC
Last Modified: 16 Nov 2021 09:51 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/13635 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

University of Kent Author Information

  • Depositors only (login required):

Total unique views for this document in KAR since July 2020. For more details click on the image.