CSIS-114: HW 7
Designing an Expert System (Part II)
In HW 6, you created and tested 4 different expert systems (4 modified systems). Essentially,
each system decided when to buy and sell an investment fund. The performance of each system
varied. For example, the original system did very well on one fund but failed on the other three.
However, the modified systems did will on the other funds, but the results varied.
A complete Expert System might actually have several different sub-systems for making final
decisions. Before a final decision is to be made, the system must choose which sub-system to
use. Lets call this type of decision a meta-decision. In this homework, we investigate how to
make such meta-decisions using a spreadsheet.
Download and open hw7.xls. You will see a tab with three different funds. You will also see
tabs with two different rules.
Question #1: Which of the three funds was Rule 1 designed for, i.e., does the best on?
Question #2: Which of the three funds was Rule 2 designed for, i.e., does the best on?
Question #3: Look at the Chart tab, based on its similarity to Fund1 and Fund2, which Rule
should you use to make buy/sell decisions for Fund3?
Question #4: In practice, which rule actually produces better results on Fund3.
Question #5: Perhaps, it is best to use a combination of Rule1 and Rule2 to make buy/sell
decisions for Fund3? Describe in a paragraph, how you could create another spreadsheet tab
(Rule 3) to use the Results of Rule1 and Rule2 to make the best decision possible? Specifically
consider Fund3 and Rules 1 and 2, but also consider a general case where you might have several
different rules and a new fund.
Bonus: If you can actually implement the combined rule (Rule 3), you can receive 100,
otherwise the highest grade you can earn is 93.
Good luck.
