We research how subject matter experts can develop knowledge-based systems that incorporate their expertise. Our approach is to develop a learning and problem solving agent, called Disciple, that an expert can teach by explaining it how to solve specific problems, and by critiquing its attempts to solve new problems (Tecuci 1998). The knowledge base of the agent is structured into an object ont...

The e ective communication of information is an important concern in the design of an expert consultation system. Several researchers have chosen to adopt a critiquing mode, in which the system evaluates and reacts to a solution proposed by the user rather than presenting its own solution. In this proposal, I present an architecture for a critiquing system that functions in real-time, during th...

Given the complexity of host-microbiota symbioses, scientists and philosophers are asking questions at new biological levels of hierarchical organization-what is a holobiont and hologenome? When should this vocabulary be applied? Are these concepts a null hypothesis for host-microbe systems or limited to a certain spectrum of symbiotic interactions such as host-microbial coevolution? Critical d...

Software architectures are high-level design representations of software systems that focus on composition of software components and how those components interact. Software architectures abstract the details of implementation and allow the designer to focus on essential design decisions. Regardless of notation, designers are faced with the task of making good design decisions that demand a bro...

Personalizing the product recommendation task is a major focus of research in the area of conversational recommender systems. Conversational case-based recommender systems help users to navigate through product spaces, alternatively making product suggestions and eliciting users feedback. Critiquing is a common form of feedback and incremental critiquing-based recommender system has shown its e...

universal categories like text complexity and readability (Dimarco/Hirst 1988), two approaches to style checking, Writer's Workbench and EPISTLE, should be mentioned. Writer's Workbench (Cherry 1983 et al.) has influenced the development of commercial software such as Rightwriter, PC-Style and Grammatik. It does style critiquing, but it cannot do critiquing that reqmres a parser output, such as...

Conversational recommender systems help to guide users through a product-space towards a particular product that meets their specific requirements. During the course of a “conversation” with the user the recommender system will suggest certain products and use feedback from the user to refine future suggestions. Critiquing has proven to be a powerful and popular form of feedback. Critiques allo...

People frequently use the world-wide web to find their most preferred item among a large range of options. We call this task preference-based search. The most common tool for preference-based search on the WWW today obtains users’ preferences by asking them to fill in a form. It then returns a list of items that most closely match these preferences. Recently, several researchers have proposed t...

Knowledge of over a thousand Chinese characters is necessary to effectively communicate in written Chinese and Japanese, so writing patterns such as stroke order and direction are heavily emphasized to students for efficient memorization. Pedagogical methods for Chinese characters can greatly benefit from sketch diagramming tools, since they can automate the task of critiquing students' writing...