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Topic: General Problem Solver

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Herbert Simon

Logic

1982

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	PROBLEM SOLVING (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-29)
		Not all problems need to be classified into these three types; however, it is a framework of ideal types--helps to determine whether a given problem primarily consists of the need for a particular skill.
		A general procedure for solving transformation problems is to select operators that result in a problem state that is closer to the goal state.
		Each box in the problem space represents one possible state of the problem, and each arrow represents a legal action that could be taken from that state.
	home.sandiego.edu /~taylor/problemsolving03.htm (1812 words)

	[No title]
		An adaptive problem solver embodies a space of heuristic methods, and only settles on a particular combination of these methods after a period of adaptation, during which the system automatically acquires information about the particu lar distribution of problems associated with the intended application.
		Generative ap proaches consider not only the structure of the domain, but also structures that arise from the problem solver interacting with specific problems from the domain.
		To turn a problem solver into an adaptive problem solver, the developer is required to specify a utility function, a representative sample of training problems, and a space of possible heuristic strategies.
	www.cs.cmu.edu /afs/cs.cmu.edu/project/jair/pub/volume4/sources/gratch96a.txt (11681 words)

	General Lawn Maintenance--Selection (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-29)
		Many potential problems related to turf use, appearance, environment, insect or disease pests, and cultural practices can be avoided by properly choosing species and cultivars that best fit the situation in which the turfgrass will be grown.
		Generally, the cost of planting turfgrasses, whether from seed, sod, plugs, sprigs, or stolons, should be of minimal concern.
		Generally, it is recommended that improved cultivars, rather than common-type turfgrasses, be used where possible.
	www.turf.uiuc.edu /lawn_problem_solver/maintenance/selection.html (2355 words)

	Mask Analysisfor Time-Series Analysis of Gene Expression Arrays
		This document is intended to provide a (hopefully accurate) description of Minch'es problem, followed by a brief description of a potential GSPS approach, with an emphasis on Mask Analysis.
		It is a "general systems" approach in that all databases are represented as fuzzy relations, perhaps probabilistic, possibilistic, or neither.
		General information theoretical measures are then used to measure various forms of structure among variables.
	informatics.indiana.edu /rocha/fungen/gsps.html (680 words)

	General Lawn Maintenance--Establishment (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-29)
		Correcting these problems after the turf is established is much more difficult than preventing their occurrence through proper site preparation, because the presence of the turf can limit your efforts.
		Generally, a 1 to 2 percent slope (a drop of 1 or 2 feet for every 100 feet of run) away from buildings is adequate.
		In general, select high-quality seed of turfgrass cultivars recommended by the Cooperative Extension Service in your area (see about NCR-192 for links to local extension sites or Turfgrasses for the Midwest).
	www.turf.uiuc.edu /lawn_problem_solver/maintenance/establishment.html (2489 words)

	Research Sampler 4: Expert Problem Solvers
		Problems can be routine textbook exercises or they can be difficult mathematical tasks which take weeks, months, or even years to solve.
		He discovered, as have others, that general heuristics like means-ends analysis or backward chaining, while good for solving general logic problems such as the missionaries-and-cannibals problem, are almost useless for problems in content rich domains like mathematics.
		Good problem solvers exhibit productive responses to insufficient understanding, while others, not wanting to admit deficiencies in their mathematical knowledge, may feel they "should" know and this may lead them to guess or use plausible, but inappropriate, procedures.
	www.maa.org /t_and_l/sampler/rs_4.html (2198 words)

	[No title] (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-29)
		The name "General Problem Solver" came from the fact that GPS was the first problem-solving program to separate its general problem solving methods from knowledge specific to the type of task at hand.
		GPS was intended to model generality in problem solving through use of the broadly applicable techniques of heuristic search, and the strategy of means-ends analysis in particular.
		For some kinds of problems, it was desirable to have other tests of applicability besides the form of the input object and to be able to describe the output object as a function of the input.
	www.ee.cooper.edu /courses/course_pages/past_courses/EE459/STRIPS (6126 words)

	Charles Babbage Institute: RESEARCH PROGRAM> Current research (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-29)
		General Problem Solver (GPS) is a program for a problem-solving process that uses means-ends analysis and planning to arrive at a solution.
		GPS was designed so that the problem-solving process is distinct from knowledge specific to the problem to be solved, which allows it to be used for a variety of problems.
		Once a general solution was outlined, the details could be reinserted into the problem and the “subproblems” constituted by these details solved within the solution guidelines established during the outlining stage.
	special.lib.umn.edu /cbi/shp/entries/generalproblemsolver.html (896 words)

	TIP: Theories
		The General Problem Solver (GPS) was a theory of human problem solving stated in the form of a simulation program (Ernst and Newell, 1969; Newell and Simon, 1972).
		The critical step in solving a problem with GPS is the definition of the problem space in terms of the goal to be achieved and the transformation rules.
		While GPS was intended to be a general problem-solver, it could only be applied to "well-defined" problems such as proving theorems in logic or geometry, word puzzles and chess.
	tip.psychology.org /simon.html (452 words)

	DISCUSSION OF LITERATURE (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-29)
		The name, General Problem Solver, suggests that its authors at one time believed that most problems could be put in its terms, but their more recent publications have indicated other points of view.
		The problem consists of the problem statement, or what is immediately given, and auxiliary information, which is potentially relevant to the problem but available only as the result of processing.
		For the problem solver to be able to work on a problem it must first transform the problem statement from its external form into the internal representation.
	www-formal.stanford.edu /jmc/mcchay69/node21.html (835 words)

	Problem Solver
		Controversy exists over the exact cause of this condition, but the general belief is that it occurs as a result of planing and/or drying the lumber.
		Lower humidity and high temperature generate pressures within wood and on adhesive bond of the coating as trapped moisture evaporates.
		This problem is prevalent in darker colors, due to absorption of heat, more than light colors.
	www.geocities.com /Eureka/4304/paintprob.html (3140 words)

	Peg Solitaire in Prolog (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-29)
		This is a simple program to solve the "peg solitaire" problem.
		Given the problem starts off in random positions (one of the rules), most solutions take less than 1 sec on my under-powered laptop.
		where "solver.pl" is the file containing the solver, "solitaire.pl" contains the problem, and "main" is just an entry point to the solver that will run and print the first solution found.
	nic-nac-project.de /~kym/junk/solve (147 words)

	INFOR: An improved tabu search method for the weighted constraint satisfaction problem
		Aiming at developing a general problem solver for combinatorial optimization problems, we consider in this paper the weighted constraint satisfaction problem (WCSP), which, given a number of constraints and their weights of importance, asks to minimize the total weight of unsatisfied constraints.
		In this problem, we are asked to decompose the set of all machines into machine cells, each of which processes the assigned part families.
		The performance of a general purpose solver may not be as high as that of specialized solvers.
	www.findarticles.com /p/articles/mi_qa3661/is_200105/ai_n8936234 (1412 words)

	The Competent Problem Solver (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-29)
		The skillful problem solver is able to invent good solutions for these new problem situations.
		Research in the nature of problem solving has been done in a variety of disciplines such as physics, medical diagnosis, engineering, project design and computer programming.
		First, simplify the problem situation by describing it with a diagram in terms of simple physical objects and essential physical quantities.
	www.hep.umn.edu /~demuth/pp/problem_solving.html (990 words)

	Problem Solver (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-29)
		A thinker who focuses on the problem as stated and tries to synthesize information and knowledge to achieve a solution.
		Performance element of a heuristic learning program which solves symbolic integration problems by applying the current set of operators and their heuristics.
		Specialty definitions using "problem solver": general problem solver.
	www.websters-online-dictionary.org /pr/problem+solver.html (277 words)

	Encyclopedia: General Problem Solver (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-29)
		Please edit this article to conform to a higher standard of article quality.
		Newell, A.; Shaw, J.C.; Simon, H.A. Report on a general problem-solving program.
		Ernst, G.W. and Newell, A. GPS: a case study in generality and problem solving.
	www.nationmaster.com /encyclopedia/General-Problem-Solver (239 words)

	The Great Problem-Solver
		Yet most of the problems it’s supposed to “solve” – the national debt, the annual Federal deficit, the Social Security mess, economic turbulence, high taxes, failing schools, international crises – are of its own making.
		In a similar way, Americans were told that World War I was “the war to end all wars.” Its chief result was World War II, whose chief result was the Cold War.
		Don’t tell the proud parents, but a child born today is born $100,000 in debt – his tax share of the debt his rulers have accumulated.
	www.lewrockwell.com /sobran/sobran263.html (714 words)

	THE GPS AND ITS SUCCESSORS (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-29)
		The initial idea was to represent problems of some general class as problems of transforming one expression into another by means of a set of allowed rules.
		In my opinion, GPS was unsuccessful as a general problem solver, because problems don't take this form in general and because most of the knowledge about the common sense needed for problem solving and achieving goals is not simply representable in the form of rules for transforming expressions.
		Newell's current candidate for general problem representation is SOAR (Laird, Newell and Rosenbloom 1987), which, as I understand it, is concerned with transforming one state to another, where the states need not be represented by expressions.
	www-formal.stanford.edu /jmc/generality/node2.html (242 words)

	[No title]
		Apply operator: First, get the problem solver into a state where the operator can be applied, i.e., where the operator's test is satisfied (using the first two steps above).
		In addition, GPS (a) decomposes the problem into subproblems, (b) orders differences (goals), (c) defers recursion, and (d) plans a solution in broad outline before working on details.
		The main problem with GPS (and weak methods in general) is that it doesn't tell you anything about how to discover or design the operator difference table for a given domain.
	www.cc.gatech.edu /classes/cs3361_97_winter/planning.txt (776 words)

	General Problem Solver (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-29)
		The General Problem Solver (GPS) system is an early planner.
		GPS generated actions that reduced the difference between some state and a goal state.
		GPS operated in the domain of state space problems specified by an initial state, some goal states, and a set of operations.
	www.cs.umbc.edu /471/lectures/11/sld031.htm (64 words)

	The General Problem Solver
		This program is a simplified version of the General Problem Solver, loosely derived from Chapter 4 of Peter Norvig's Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming (San Mateo, California: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 1991) and, even more loosely, from Alan Newell and Herbert A.
		If the goal is already met in the initial state, the problem is trivial; otherwise, achieve searches for an appropriate operation -- one that would result in the addition of the goal to the current state -- and attempts to achieve all of the preconditions for that goal.
		If it succeeds, the achieve procedure returns a pair in which the first component is the state reached at the end of the process and the second component is a list of the operations by which the result was achieved.
	www.math.grin.edu /~stone/events/scheme-workshop/gps.html (1142 words)

	[No title]
		The problem specific procedures will be used to recognize a goal state, to compare states to see if they are equivalent, and to create successors to any state in the search space.
		We now adopt a more general approach to the problem of controlling search, making use of the idea of a search space, with an initial state, one or more goal states, operators which move from one state to another, and heuristics for 'pruning' the search.
		An example from the tower problem is rejecting a state if the total in the sofar list is already greater than the height of the tower, or perhaps rejecting it if each of the alternative blocks would cause the total to be too high if added to the sofar list.
	www.cs.bham.ac.uk /research/poplog/teach/searching (5215 words)

	Modularity and Learning Modules of PRODIGY
		The EBL module uses the results from the problem-solving trace generated by the central problem solver to acquire control rules.
		Explanations are constructed from an axiomatized theory that describes both the domain and the architecture of the problem solver.
		These strategies are evoked when the problem solver comes to a place where the new problem's justifications are similar to a previously-solved problem.
	ai.eecs.umich.edu /cogarch4/prodigy/descrip_module.html (500 words)

	AI-Based Problem Solving (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-29)
		A general problem solver is a program that can produce solutions to all sorts of different problems about which it has no specific, designed-in knowledge.
		Because a general problem solver must search for a solution through what might be a very large, mazelike universe of possibilities, finding ways to search such an environment is a priority.
		But for many problems (especially those for which you would want to use a computer) the number of nodes in the search space is very large, and as the search space grows, so does the number of possible paths to the goal.
	www.devarticles.com /c/a/Java/AIBased-Problem-Solving (1347 words)

	Functional Genomics Project: Analysis of Expression Arrays
		tissue sampled over time) has also been discussed, in which case general systems problem solving (GSPS) methods would be applied (a preliminary description of how GSPS could be used for this problem is available).
		The domain of the problem data is still in the defining stage.
		We are currently working to clarify the source of data with the functional genomics project and how to represent the specific data appropriately in the frameworks mentioned above.
	www.c3.lanl.gov /%7Erocha/fungen (542 words)

	Problem Solvers
		When you are experiencing a plant problem and attempting to diagnose it, browsing some pictures of known problems on the same plant or an unrelated plant that has the same problem can be very helpful.
		Picture tell a good story, but must be combined with symptoms, when they appeared, what parts are affected, pattern of development, severity of spread and growing conditions.
		Common disease, insect and cultural problems on annuals and perennials.
	www.drgoodearth.com /index.cfm?fuseaction=kbase.main (186 words)

	Chapter 10 (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-29)
		A well-defined problem has a clearly defined starting point, and we know a solution when we see it.
		A powerful strategy for solving a problem is to recognize its similarity to some other, previously solved problem.
		Mental set is the use of an entrenched procedure for solving a class of problem.
	www.unc.edu /courses/pre2000fall/psyc020/Chapter10.html (1144 words)

	I (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-29)
		Devise a plan that would produce a problem solving sequence of moves.
		An attempt to program computers to do human like things especially to reason and to understand language, but with no necessary connection to how these processes are accomplished by humans.
		Tell the process that would be taken to build this system as well as your option on how feasible and helpful it would be.
	www.people.memphis.edu /~scraig/lecturenotes.htm (612 words)

	Nat' Academies Press, Biographical Memoirs V.71 (1997)
		In the summer of 1957, during a workshop at Carnegie Tech on organizational behavior, Al and I extracted from the protocol of a single subject solving logic problems what proved to be a key mechanism in human problem solving: means-ends analysis.
		In M-E analysis the problem solver compares the current situation with the goal situation; finds a difference between them; finds in memory an operator that experience has taught reduces differences of this kind; and applies the operator to change the situation.
		The idea of M-E analysis led to the General Problem Solver (Newell, Shaw, and Simon, 1960), a program that could solve problems in a number of domains after being provided with a problem space (domain representation), operators to move through the space, and information about which operators were relevant for reducing which differences.
	www.nap.edu /books/0309057388/html/152.html (439 words)

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