The Match Cost of Adding a New Rule: A Clash of Views

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What is the match cost of adding a new rule to a production system (rule-based system)? Two conflicting views have emerged. Research in EBL indicates that learned rules add to the match cost of a production system. Thus, as the production system size increases with learning, the match cost will also increase. There is much data in the literature to support this phenomenon. On the contrary, researchers in parallel production systems have concluded that the match effort in a production system is limited, independent of the size of the production system. Thus, an increase in the size of the production system will not lead to an increase in the match cost. There is much data to support this phenomenon as well. In this paper, we point out these contradictory views of production match in the two research communities. A direct analysis of these conflicting views is difficult, since the two communities have worked with vastly different systems. Therefore, we have developed some large production systems in Soar, to analyze the situation within a common framework. This common framework narrows down the possible causes for this conflict, and raises important questions for future work.