Symbolic reasoning procedure

Third, the developer must determine that the problem is well suited to use of expert system technologies. If the problem is purely algorithmic or procedural in nature, then it can be addressed by conventional technologies more efficiently than by expert systems. If the type of problem requires symbolic reasoning, then the problem may be suitable for expert systems technology. 

Slots can represent variables of different types (e.g., integer, real, symbol, interval) or functions (e.g., procedure, link) used in basic algorithms. The majority of systems using case-based reasoning, which is described later in this chapter, work with frames. 

The expert system uses problem solving procedures such as patternmatching to reason about the symbolic terms. 

As the DCI is computed on the basis of symbol frequencies, in principle it is not required to have a time series but just a collection of snapshots of the system variables. However, the results discussed in this paper have been obtained by analysing time series of discrete-time discrete-state systems. In order to find the RSs, in principle all the possible subsets of sj tem variables should be considered and their DCI computed. In practice, this procedure is feasible only for small-size subsystems in a reasonable amoimt of time. Therefore, heuristics are required to address the study of large-size systems. 

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