"The purpose of this paper is to clarify some basic issues of choice of representation for problems of reasoning about actions. The general problem of re- Presentation is concerned with the relationship between different ways of formulating a problem to a problem solving system and the efficiency with which the system can be expected to find a solution to the problem. An understanding of the relationship between problem formulation and problem solving efficiency is a prerequisite for the design of procedures that can automatically choose the most `appropriate' representation of a problem ( they can find a `point of view' of the problem that maximally simplifies the process of finding a solution).Many problems of practical importance are problems of reasoning about actions. In these problems, a course of action has to be found that satisfies a number of specified conditions. A formal definition of this class of problems is given in the next section, in the context of a general conceptual framework for formulating these problems for computers. Everyday examples of reasoning about actions include planning an airplane trip, organizing a dinner party, etc. There are many examples of industrial and military problems in this category, such as scheduling assembly and transportation processes, designing a program for a computer, planning a military operation, etc."In D.Michie (Ed.), Machine intelligence 3. New York: American Elsevier,131-171

In Dale, E. and Michie, D. (Eds.), Machine Intelligence 2, pp. 125-133. Elsevier/North-Holland.

In E. Dale and D. Michie (Eds.), Machine intelligence 2. New York: American Elsevier, 89- 118.

Note: PDF of full volume downloadable by clicking on title above (26 MB). Selected individual chapters available from the links below. CONTENTSINTRODUCTION MATHEMATICAL FOUNDATIONS1 The morphology of prex—an essay in meta-algorithmics. J. LAS KS 32 Program schemata. M. S. PATE RSON 193 Language definition and compiler validation. J. J. FLORENTIN 334 Placing trees in lexicographic order. H. I.S COINS 43 THEOREM PROVING5 A new look at mathematics and its mechanization. B. M ELTZER 636 Some notes on resolution strategies. B. MELTZER 717 The generalized resolution principle. J. A. ROBINSON 778 Some tree-paring strategies for theorem proving. D.LUCKHAM 959 Automatic theorem proving with equality substitutions andmathematical induction. J. L. D ARLINGTON 113 MACHINE LEARNING AND HEURISTIC PROGRAMMING10 On representations of problems of reasoning about actions.S.AMAREL 13111 Descriptions. E.W.ELCOCK 17312 Kalah on Atlas. A.G.BELL 18113 Experiments with a pleasure-seeking automaton: J. E. DORAN 19514 Collective behaviour and control problems. V.I.VARSHAVSKY 217 MAN—MACHINE INTERACTION15 A comparison of heuristic, interactive, and unaided methods ofsolving a shortest-route problem. D.MICHIE, J. G. FLEMING andJ. V.OLDFIELD 24516 Interactive programming at Carnegie Tech. A.H.BOND 25717 Maintenance of large computer systems—the engineer's assistant.M.H.J.BAYLIS 269 COGNITIVE PROCESSES: METHODS AND MODELS18 The syntactic analysis of English by machine. J.P.THORNE,P.BRATLEY and H.DEWAR 28119 The adaptive memorization of sequences. H.C.LONOUETHIGGINSand A.ORTONY 311 PATTERN RECOGNITION20 An application of Graph Theory in pattern recognition.C.J.HILDITCH 325 PROBLEM-ORIENTED LANGUAGES21 Some semantics for data structures. D. PARK 35122 Writing search algorithms in functional form. R.M.BURSTALL 37323 Assertions: programs written without specifying unnecessaryorder. J.M.FOSTER 38724 The design philosophy of Pop-2. R.J.POPPLESTONE 393 INDEX 403 Machine Intelligence Workshop

Since mid-November 1966 a chess program has been under development at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory of Project MAC at M.I.T. This paper describes the state of the program as of August 1967 and gives some of the details of the heuristics and algorithms employed.

In Dale, Ella and Donald Michie (Eds.), Machine Intelligence 2. Edinburgh University Press.

A new signature table technique is described together with an improved book learning procedure which is thought to be much superior to the linear polynomial method described earlier. Full use is made of the so called “alpha-beta” pruning and several forms of forward pruning to restrict the spread of the move tree and to permit the program to look ahead to a much greater depth than it other- wise could do. While still unable to outplay checker masters, the program’s playing ability has been greatly improved.See also:IEEE XploreAnnual Review in Automatic Programming, Volume 6, Part 1, 1969, Pages 1–36Some Studies in Machine Learning Using the Game of CheckersIBM J of Research and Development ll, No.6, 1967,601

This report is part of the RAND Corporation Paper series. The paper was a product of the RAND Corporation from 1948 to 2003 that captured speeches, memorials, and derivative research, usually prepared on authors' own time and meant to be the scholarly or scientific contribution of individual authors to their professional fields. Papers were less formal than reports and did not require rigorous peer review. This document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law. This representation of RAND intellectual property is provided for noncommercial use only.

PNAS, 53, 244–246

"Among the new languages for instructing computers is a remarkable one called LISP. The name comes from the first three letters of LIST and the first letter of PROCESSING. Not only is LISP a language for instructing computers but it is also a formal mathematical language, in the same way as elëmentary algebra when rigorously defined and used is a formal mathematical language.The LISP language and its implementation on the IBM 7090 computer were worked out by a group including John McCarthy, Stephen B. Russell , Daniel J. Edwards, Paul W. Abrahams, Timothy P. Hart, Michael I. Levin, Marvin L. Minsky, and others.LISP is designed primarily for processing data consisting of lists of symbols. It has been used for symbolic calculations in differential and integral calculus, electrical circuit theory, mathematical logic , game playing, and other fields of intelligent handling of symbols."Information International, Inc, Cambridge, Mass.