Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site cadre.ARPA Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!think!harvard!seismo!rochester!cmu-cs-pt!cadre!geb From: geb@cadre.ARPA (Gordon E. Banks) Newsgroups: net.lang.prolog Subject: prolog questions Message-ID: <496@cadre.ARPA> Date: Wed, 21-Aug-85 10:15:10 EDT Article-I.D.: cadre.496 Posted: Wed Aug 21 10:15:10 1985 Date-Received: Sat, 24-Aug-85 17:49:52 EDT Reply-To: geb@cadre.ARPA (Gordon E. Banks) Organization: Decision Systems Lab., University of Pittsburgh Lines: 31 I am interested in prolog, but cursory examination of the relevant literature and a hour or two playing with the NSW version makes me wonder if it is worth investing a lot of time. In order to be useful to me, I must be able to do two things, which are not readily apparent how to do. This is likely because I am unfamiliar with non-procedural style. So if there are any prolog wizards, can prolog be made to: 1) Given a predicate whose premise is not known, and there are no predicates whose action yields the premise, is there a general way of making prolog ask the user for the data? Or does each askable premise have to have a predicate constructed for it to make the program ask? 2) Can prolog deal with certainty factors? I mean, if all you want to do is build another macsyma, this doesn't come up, but prolog promoters are talking about expert systems to do medical diagnosis, no less, and without ability to handle uncertainty, it would be pretty useless for this task. We don't deal in yes/no binary questions. If anyone can refer me to any articles dealing with this issue in prolog, I would be grateful. Thanks Gordon Banks geb@cadre.arpa or {akgua,ihnp4,vax135}!cadre!geb