From Facts to Rules to Decisions: An Overview of the FRD-1 System

One of the central goals of knowledge discovery in databases is to produce knowledge useful for decision making. However, the form in which knowledge can be easily discovered is often different from the form in which its is most readily used for decision making. This paper describes a methodology in which knowledge is discovered in declarative form (decision rules). When it is needed for decision making, it is on-line transferred to a procedural form (a decision structure) optimized for the given decision making situation. The system FRD-1, which implements the methodology, is briefly described, and illustrated by its application to a problem in the area of construction engineering.