Next: Language
Up: The problem statement
Previous: Brittleness
Different programs can encode the same
information in different ways. Typically their symbol names will not
match. Even if they represent the same value, they may represent it
in different ways. Consider three medical diagnosis programs that
represent the parameter fever in different ways: the first one uses a
scale of ``low, medium, high'', the second one uses ``slight,
moderate, extreme'', and the last one uses numerical values. A human
being looking at these programs can understand that these refer to the
same scale, and convert between them easily, because he has access to
the meaning of these symbols. The programs, on the other hand, will
have a hard time sharing knowledge.
Deniz Yuret
Tue Apr 1 21:26:01 EST 1997