COMMENT ⊗   VALID 00005 PAGES
C REC  PAGE   DESCRIPTION
C00001 00001
C00002 00002	Tentative description of the HPP miniconference
C00007 00003	Hints to the Lecturers
C00011 00004	Domain questions
C00025 00005	Project-specific desires: what you hope to get out of the conference
C00027 ENDMK
C⊗;
Tentative description of the HPP miniconference

Most of the time for scheduled talks at the conf. will be broken
down by PROJECT, not by individual. It is the responsibility of each
project to coordinate a meaningful sequence of talks by its members.

Day 1: Each project will present general material, dealing with:
	a) The domain of the project; e.g., enough background on the
		variables involved in medical diagnosis, and heuristics
		used, to enable the listener to understand some details
		of why MYCIN was designed the way it is.
	b) The motivation for the program; e.g., how humans perform at this
		task, what hopes there were in trying to automate it, why
		this would be interesting or useful if successful,...
	c) The initial design of the program; the organization, the parts of
		the task that were emphasized, the parts that were omitted,
		the fundamental representations and algorithms developed.
	d) Major problems that cropped up which might be of general character;
		the potential solutions considered; how they were solved or deferred
		New innovations and ideas which might be of use in other projects.

Days 2,3: Each project will present a series of brief talks and discussions,
at a more detailed level, involving the following themes:
	a) Design of large systems
	   separation of programs from data bases
	   modular representation of knowledge
	   multiple representations, multiple internal languages, redundancy

	b) Management of large systems
	   debugging large data bases: inconsistency, assigning blame,...
	   gathering large quantities of expert knowledge, and handling it.
	   gathering up experts and dealing with them
	   program interraction with the expert in dealing with the data base
		and explaining the activities of the program.
	   pragmatics for handling huge programs, with huge time demands

	c) Heuristic Search in huge, complex spaces
	   acquiring heuristics (manually) to guide search
	   if relevant: automatic acquisition; hypothesis formation, theory
		formation, rule-learning, induction,...
	   altering and adding to this heuristic knowledge
	   assessing the power of the heuristics used
	   relationship between generating and pruning heuristics

	d) A sample session with the system (fake it if not yet running)
	   show new knowledge being entered in
	   show the variety of knowledge and abilities of the system
	   show the system actually solving a problem it was designed for
	   show the system explaining itself, assigning blame, ...
	   don't show more bells and whistles than necessary
	   don't show more internal details than necessary

	e) Interaction of the project with hardware
	   potential uses for distributed computing, parallel processes, etc.
	   Imagine a factor of 10000 increase in speed and/or memory,
		How would this affect the "success" of your present system? 
		How might you have designed it differently?

Hints to the Lecturers

1) Use common,  well-established terms for  the concepts you  will be
discussing.   Don't invent new words for  concepts which already have
adequate English words available.

1b) Conversely,  if  an English  word  has  a common  meaning,  don't
pervert it  to mean something new  just during your lecture!  If your
"MATCH"  function really just  tests for equality, then  use the word
"EQUALS"!! Don't UNNECESSARILY strain your audience's minds.

2) Try to abstract concepts  from your program to a level  above what
is merely  an implementation detail. One guideline  for deciding when
you are being too specific has been suggested by Randy Davis: If your
description uses program variable names for concepts,  then it is too
specific.

3) Try to deal with issues of importance; that means don't talk about
details that won't even interest  YOU two months from now. Also,  try
to rephrase  the issues, problems,  strategies, etc. into  as general
terms as possible.

3b)  If you think  some central  themes have been  omitted from those
already given, you're probably right. Tell us all, soon!

4) When you  get the questionaires returned  to you later this  week,
use them to build up a picture of your audience. What do they already
know? What do they really want to hear about? What DON'T they want to
hear? Why are they coming to your talk?

5) Each group should coordinate its members' talks.  When each person
has some idea of what he wants to contribute, the group will meet and
sketch a provisional schedule  of talks, topics, prerequisites,  etc.
This should be  done this month!  A tentative  schedule for the whole
conference  will be  distributed well in  advance.   Each talk should
clearly indicate  what prerequisite knowledge  will be assumed.  This
might mean handing out supplementary "dictionaries" beforehand, going
to some general talk the first day, having taken an organic chemistry
course, having  worked on that  project for  two years,...   Clearly,
some of these  are ridiculous. If you makethe prerequisites explicit,
you will avoid demanding the impossible of your audience.

6) There may be "state of the project" addresses;  panel discussions,
seminars,... Think  now about  what kind of  "inter-project" sessions
would produce the best syntheses of ideas.

Domain questions

Please note  that the following  questions are  designed to help  the
lecturers  at  the  HPP  conference  meet  the  needs  of  the  other
participants.   Your  ability to  answer  these  questions is  NOT  a
measure of  whether you  should attend the  conference, but  is being
noted so that the lecturers will know what domain-specific background
knowledge will be common knowledge to the participants.

***************************************************************************

DENDRAL

1) Chemical terms.  On a scale of 1= no idea, 2= rings a bell,
3= modest understanding and 4= I grok it, indicate your familiarity 
with the following chemical terms:
atom
valence
chemical bond
multiple bond
aromaticity
spiro center
stereochemistry
bridged ring system
functional group
strain

2) On the same scale, indicate your familiarity with the following
terms from graph theory and combinatorics:
graph
non-directed edge
subgraph
isomorphism
spanning tree
graph matching
cut node
n-connectedness
canonical representation
symmetry group
permutation
labeling (of edges and/or nodes)
Polya counting
orbits
connection table

3) Have you had any experience in identifying an unknown organic
compound using chemical and/or spectroscopic methods?

4) Very briefly, indicate (if you know) the most significant kinds
of structural information which can be obtained from the following
kinds of spectra:
infrared
ultraviolet
proton NMR
Mass spectra

5) Have you ever had to clean up after a combinatorial explosion?

6) Would you like to learn more about DENDRAL's  domain in general?
   Learn about the specific automated task that DENDRAL does?
   Hear the problems DENDRAL encountered, and how they were handled?
   Learn more about the representations for knowledge in DENDRAL?
   Learn more about the computer science algorithms used in DENDRAL?
   Learn more about the chemical "DENDRAL algorithm" itself?
   Hear how DENDRAL relates to the "themes" of all the projects?

********************************************************************

X-ray Crystallography

On a scale of 1=no idea, 2= rings a bell, 3=modest understanding
and 4= I grok it, indicate your ability to answer the following
questions dealing with the Xray crystallography project.

1) What is the relationship between an amino acid and a protein 

2) Do you know what an electron-density map is 

3) What data is collected in an X-ray crystallography experiment 

4) Do you know what a Fourier Transform is and its relationship to 
X-ray crystallography 

5) Do you know what a Patterson function is and how it can be used in 
structural inference 

6) Would you like to learn more about X-ray crystallography in general?
   Learn about the specific sctructural inference task this system does?
   Hear the problems X-RAY-CRYS encountered, and how they were handled?
   Learn more about the representations for knowledge in X-RAY-CRYS?
   Learn more about the computer science algorithms used in X-RAY-CRYS?
   Learn more about the chemical algorithms X-RAY-CRYS uses?
   Hear how X-RAY-CRYS relates to the "themes" of all the projects?

*********************************************************

MOLGEN

1) On the same scale as above indicate your familiarity with
   the following terms from molecular genetics.
DNA
oligonucleotide
double-stranded
chromatography
renaturation/denaturation
enzyme
plasmid
gene amplification
endonuclease
plaque
gel electrophoresis
phage
5'-end
base pairing
base specificity

2) Similarly, indicate your familiarity with the following
   terms from computer science and mathematics.
hierarchical planning
state-space
fuzzy data
Canonical Forms
Discrete event simulation

3) Would you like to learn more about molecular genetics in general?
   Learn about the specific automated task that MOLGEN does?
   Hear the problems MOLGEN encountered, and how they were handled?
   Learn more about the representations for knowledge in MOLGEN?
   Learn more about the computer science algorithms used in MOLGEN?
   Learn more about the chemical algorithms in MOLGEN?
   Hear how MOLGEN relates to the "themes" of all the projects?

*************************************************************************

AUTOMATED MATHEMATICIAN

1) On a scale of 1=no idea, 2= rings a bell, 3=modest understanding
and 4= I grok it, indicate your familiarity with these math concepts:
   Prime numbers
   The composition of two functions
   The Euler PHI function
   An axiom
   A relation on AxB
   The Unique factorization theorem
   Cardinality
   Do you know what {xεN s.t. ∀zεN.(z|x → (z=x ∨ z=1))} means?
   
2) Can you compute the dot product of two vectors?
   Prove that there are an infinite number of primes?
   How does the following task strike you (easy, hard, dull, meaningless...):
   "Derive the concept of prime numbers, starting from purely set-theoretic notions"
   Have you ever done any math research (new definitions and axioms, 
	formalizing some phenomena into mathematical statements)

3) Familiarity with the following AI concepts (1-4 scale):
   Frames
   Beings
   Actors
   Demons
   Blackboard
   QA4/QLISP
   Local vs. global heuristic evaluation criteria
   Procedural embedding of knowledge
   
4) Would you like to learn more about elementary number theory and the
	foundations of arithmetic?
   Learn about the specific math concepts that AM starts with and derives?
   Hear the problems AM encountered, and how they were handled?
   Learn more about the representations for knowledge in AM?
   Learn more about the computer science algorithms used in AM?
   Learn more about the math heuristics that reduce AM's search space?
   Hear how AM relates to the "themes" of all the projects?

**************************************************************************

MYCIN

1) On a scale of 1=no idea, 2= rings a bell, 3=modest understanding
and 4= I grok it, indicate your familiarity with these concepts:
culture site [hint: not the museum and opera house]
bacteremia
anaerobic
gramstain
kanamycin
crotaline
production system
attribute-object-value triple
lexical binding
dynamic binding
problem reduction
nosocomial
predicate function

2) Do you know what the primary task of antimicrobial therapy is? 
   Do you know what antimicrobial therapy is?
   Do you know what antimicrobial means?

3) The program has roughly four main sub-tasks which it performs. Please
   rate on a scale from 1 (little interest) to 4 (very interested) how
   interested you are in each one:
	consultation system (the performance program)
	explanation system  (explains the performance program)
	question answering  (handles natural language inquiries)
	knowledge acquisition (allows expert to educate the program)

4) Did you think the joke about combinatorial explosion was very funny?
	
5) How interested would you be in discussing (not listening to a lecture
   on, but discussing as a group) the social, political, economic, or
   whatever impact of programs of the sort MYCIN might someday be?
   (i.e. the impact of programs which perform useful tasks at or near
   expert level). [1 - 4 scale]

6) Would you like to hear about different approaches to the cognitive
     task of medical diagnosis?
   Learn about the specific automated task that MYCIN does?
   Hear the problems MYCIN encountered, and how they were handled?
   Learn more about the representations for knowledge in MYCIN?
   Learn more about the computer science algorithms used in MYCIN?
   Learn more about the medical heuristics/algorithms in MYCIN?
   Hear how MYCIN relates to the "themes" of all the projects?

***************************************************************************

META-DENDRAL

1) Definitions for a few terms are provided on a separate handout. After
glancing over the definition of each term, rate its familiarity (1-4 scale):
Chemical structure
Subgraph
Name
Mass spectral process
Process label
Mass spectral peak
Bondset evidence
Mass spectral rule

2) Do you know the difference between an elemental composition and a subgraph?
Do you know what constitutes evidence for a rule, in Meta-Dendral?
What is the "skeleton" in Meta-Dendral's closet?

2) Would you like to learn more about META-DENDRAL's  domain in general?
   Learn about the specific automated task that META-DENDRAL does?
   Hear the problems META-DENDRAL encountered, and how they were handled?
   Learn more about the representations for knowledge in META-DENDRAL?
   Learn more about the computer science algorithms used in META-DENDRAL?
   Learn more about the chemical knowledge and heuristics in META-DENDRAL?
   Hear how META-DENDRAL relates to the "themes" of all the projects?
Project-specific desires: what you hope to get out of the conference

			     AM   METAD   DENDRAL   MOLGEN   MYCIN   XRAY

Domain question 1
Domain question 2
Domain question 3
Domain question 4
Learn more about
 the domain in general
Learn about the
 specific automated task
Hear the problems
  and how handled
Representations used
Algorithms used
Relationship to the
 major themes of HPP


Below, describe any additional "pseudothemes" you can think of, besides
those mentioned earlier:





Think about what YOU want to talk about. If you can, provide a brief sketch:




Questionaires will be distributed to each group, to assess the state of
their future audience. Provisional plans, from each group as a whole,
should then be returned to Mark Stefik or Doug Lenat.
If all goes well, a tentative schedule of talks will be ready next week.