Trust Academy

In Collaboration with

Midlands State University

Bachelor of Science (Hons.) Management Information Systems

FINAL EXAMINATION – APRIL 2020

BMIS 225 : EXPERT SYSTEMS AND KNOWLEDGE-BASED

SYSTEMS

TIME : 3 HOURS

INSTRUCTIONS TO CANDIDATE:

1. Answer all questions from Section A and any 3 questions from Section B
2. Start each question on a new page

There are 3 printed pages for this question paper

SECTION A: Answer ALL questions from this section

QUESTION 1

1
a) Describe the main parts of an expert system. Show how they interact with one another.
[8
marks]
b) Describe any four (4) advantages that expert systems offer organisations that would
otherwise have to employ human experts.
[4 marks]
c) What is the main purpose of Expert Systems? [4 marks]
d) Why is MYCIN considered important in the development of expert systems and how did it
lead to EMYCIN? [4 marks]

QUESTION 2
a) Why is knowledge acquisition often referred to as the Expert System `bottleneck'?
[5
marks]
b) Some common problems that can occur when building expert systems are:
i. The expert’s knowledge base and the inference engine algorithms get inextricably
entwined, and it becomes impossible to update one without introducing problems into
the other.
ii. Having spent months extracting and representing rules from an expert, the knowledge
base is still seriously incomplete and cannot solve even the simplest problems.
iii. The expert has given us so many rules that the operation of the system has become
unacceptably slow.
iv. The knowledge acquisition process has taken much longer than we expected, and now
our expert refuses to work with us anymore.
v. Having got our expert system to perform well, it is now proving impossible to figure
out how it is coming up with its outputs.
For each, suggest how we could minimize the chances of them happening, and how we should
proceed if they do occur. [10 marks]
c) Why do many people say they will not trust a `robo-doc' medical diagnosis expert system?
[5
marks]

2
___________________________________________________________________________

SECTION B: Answer ANY 3 questions from this section.

QUESTION 3
Neural Network technology has successfully found applications in the commercial world.
Discuss how it has made the transition from research laboratory to business applications. Focus
on the real business problems that the technology addresses and the benefits perceived to have
been realised.
[20 marks]
QUESTION 4
Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques are now used extensively in the analysis and interpretation
of large data sets. With reference to how data mining is used in intelligent search engines on the
web, discuss the benefits, problems, and challenges that emerge from Big Data and Data
Analytics applications. Use relevant examples to illustrate your answer. [20
marks]

QUESTION 5
a) With an aid of a diagram, discuss the five members of the expert system development team
and the roles each play in the development of an expert system. [10 marks]
b) Using two brief examples of knowledge representation, explain how knowledge may be
represented in the knowledge base. [10 marks]

QUESTION 6
a) Show how BREADTH-FIRST-SEARCH and DEPTH-FIRST-SEARCH can be implemented
using some appropriate pseudo-code. If you use another search algorithm as a sub-routine then
show this algorithm in detail as well. [10 marks]
b) Describe any data structures that are used in implementing the two searches and describe the
way in which they are used. [6 marks]

3
c) Describe the terms complete and optimal with regards to evaluating search strategies?
[4
marks]

4
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