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From: fhadsell@slate.mines.colorado.edu (Frank Hadsell)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Decision Support Systems
Message-ID: <1991Apr03.120904.18171@slate.mines.colorado.edu>
Date: 3 Apr 91 12:09:04 GMT
References: <1991Apr3.002410.23862@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu>
Organization: Colorado School of Mines
Lines: 34

I'm afraid that this won't help you very much; however, I have constructed
a prototype expert system called the "Structured Decision Maker" that I
use when I need to make a decision and don't know where to start.

This system was put together under TI's shell called Personal Consultant
Plus on the basis of the paradigm of Chales Wales and Anne Nardi of 
West Virginia University. They called their system "Successful
Decision-Making. I also call my expert system the Committee Chairman's
Advisor.

SDM can be compared to a bull-headed word processor. For one thing it
will not let you enter a partial solution until you have defined the
problem. It provides a lot of help derived from years of my experience
with committees and from Wales and Nardi.

There are a variety of other paradigms that can be used. I also
recommend "The New Rational Manager" by Kepner and Tregoe. The central
idea is that one needs some sort of procedure to follow when confronted
by the tough decison that must be made.

I would no longer recommend my expert system to anyone, but I would
still be prepared to defend the idea that computers can guide us through
tough decisions, in any knowledge domain.

I plan to reconstruct SDM on my NeXT using Objective-C. I've gotten
started but just.

Is there anyone else out there who is interested in this game? Are there
other systems to help us with the decision making process?

-- 
 INTERNET:: fhadsell@mines.colorado.edu  BITNET:: fhadsell@mines
 Frank Hadsell, Prof. of Geophysics, Colorado School of Mines,
 Golden, Colorado   80401     (303) 273-3456