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Informatics
Max Milliway Started conversation Feb 22, 2002
The Guide has little to say on the science of informatics. Sure all the things to operate a computer are there, but the ones who are interested in these things which can only be understood using a computer, will be disappointed with this 'ere work of art... 
My favourite topics are knowledge-based systems and artificial neural networks. So if anyone looking for these things here comes across this entry, drop me a line.
Other keywords: machine learning, elaboration tolerance, belief revision, knowledge-based planning
Informatics
Monsignore Pizzafunghi Bosselese Posted May 25, 2002
er... excuse me, please *what* is 'belief revision'?
Informatics
Max Milliway Posted Nov 27, 2002
Hey Sir Bossel,
sorry that so much time has passed, but nowadays i have so much to do that i'm not often visiting the h2g2.
To your question: Belief revision is a necessary part of any autonomous agent (e.g. robots, computer programs, even humans/animals, etc.) that maintains a model about the world it acts in. The model is usually thought of consisting of beliefs about that world. For example, a robot whose task it is to mow the lawn, believes that grass is green and the sidewalk is not. So according to its model of the world it will mow anything that is green and stop at anything that is not. Now suppose you put a sprinkler with a green pole on your lawn. The poor robot tries to mow it down and fails. So it has to revise its beliefs (its model) about the world. That is called belief revision and is actually quite hard to do.
Greetings,
Max
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Informatics
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