NOTE

...Projects are to be turned in at the beginning of the class period on which they are due. A penalty (10%) will be assessed projects that are submitted after the due date. Every student is required to attend exams according to the scheduled time. Any exceptions must be made in advance.

Project

Each group consists of one to three persons. Each group is responsible for finding a business related case, analyzing the case, and designing a prototype expert system. EXSYS?PRO is recommended as a good expert system shell for your project. You may also choose any other expert system shell with which you are familiar.

Presentation

Each group is required to present its project proposal and final project to the class. Presentation must be clear. It is each group's responsibility to make the whole class understand what your group is doing or has done. You may utilize transparencies, projectors, hand?outs, or even computer facilities to present your proposal or project. Your presentations should be controlled within 20 minutes (including Q&A time). From other group's presentations, your group may understand what other groups are planning to achieve or have achieved. Furthermore, your group may gain some better ideas for improving your project.

Reports

Each group is required to submit a proposal and a final report at their scheduled time (see Course Outline section). Reports should be typed and double?spaced.

Proposal report may include 1) Cover page, 2) Introduction, 3) Statement of the problem, 4) Significance (may include feasibility study), 5) Purpose of the study (objectives), 6) Scope, Assumptions, and Limitations, 7) Proposed Methodology, 8)Possible Outcomes, 9) Project schedule (Gantt Chart), and 10) Summary and Conclusions. The length of proposal report should be about 10 pages (excluding appendix and bibliography).

Your final report may include contents from proposal report plus your Methodology, Demonstration of your system, and Summary and Conclusions. The length of final report is about 20 pages (excluding appendix and bibliography). Each team may submit two copies: I will keep one copy for future reference for this course. The second one will be returned to you with my comments. You may submit only one copy if you do not want to get a copy back.

Instructions for preparing an Applied Expert Systems Project

1. Describe the problem.
   Why was it selected? Why is ES advantageous? What are the possible benefits?

2. List the expert(s) used.
   How were they selected?

3. Prepare a feasibility study.

4. Describe the sources of knowledge and the knowledge acquisition process in detail.

5. List in an appendix all the rules in the programming language and in English.

6. Make sure that the explanations (the answers to the"how" and "why" questions) are in everyday English. (At minimum display the rules.)

7. Give a print-out of a sample consultation.
   Make sure to include: "why", "certainty factors", and "how".

8. Show the logical tree for the sample consultation.

9. Describe the rapid prototyping you used.
   You must improve the system at least once.

10. Conduct a sensitivity analysis (in EXSYS use the "change" command).

11. Describe the testing and evaluation of the system.

12. List all the problems encountered.

13. List all the shortcomings of the development tools.

14. List the limitations of your specific ES.

15. Is your ES as smart as a human?
    Why or why not? Can it be as intelligent as the expert? Why or why not? How can it be evaluated?

16. If you had a chance to improve the ES, what would you do? (Be specific.)

17. Submit the knowledge base on a separate diskette.

18. Use certainty factors. (On EXSYS's scale use -100 to 100.)

19. Use some rules with mathematical notations.

20. List the most important lessons you learned in executing this project.

21. The project must include a table of contents and an executive summary.
    It should be typed, double spaced, about 15-20 pages of text (excluding appendices and bibliography).