Book review: Abduetive Inference Models for Diagnostic Problem Solving by Y. Peng and J. Reggia (Springer Verlag New York 1990)

Abstract

In the spring of 1990, the American Association for Artificial Intelligence sponsored a symposium on abductive inference, bringing together several dozen researchers (O'Rorke 1990). The term "abduction" as a form of inference originated with C.S. Peirce in the 1890s, and was introduced in artificial intelligence by Pople (1973). In recent years, it has found increasing use by researchers working on a diverse set of topics, particularly medical diagnosis, scientific discovery, and natural language understanding. But what is abductive inference?