Knowledge Representation

Desirable Properties of a Good Knowledge Representation System

1. Representational Adequacy

Ability to represent all kinds of knowledge that are needed in that domain

2. Inferential Adequacy

Ability to manipulate the representational structures in such a way as to derive new structures corresponding to new knowledge inferred from old

3. Inferential Efficiency

Ability to incorporate into the knowledge structure, additional information that can be used to focus the attention of the inference mechanisms in the most promising directions

4. Acquisitional Efficiency

The ability to acquire new information easily. The simplest case involves direct insertion, by a person, of new knowledge into the database. Ideally, the program itself would be able to control knowledge acquisition.