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55-530: An operational definition is designed to model or represent a concept or theoretical definition , also known as a construct. Scientists should describe the operations (procedures, actions, or processes) that define the concept with enough specificity such that other investigators can replicate their research. Operational definitions are also used to define system states in terms of a specific, publicly accessible process of preparation or validation testing. For example, 100 degrees Celsius may be operationally defined as

110-432: A numerical focus, use limit theory, of various sorts, to overcome the duck test necessity with varying degrees of success. Yet, with that, issues still remain as representational frameworks bear heavily on what we can know. In arguing for an object-based methodology, Peter Wegner suggested that "positivist scientific philosophies, such as operationalism in physics and behaviorism in psychology" were powerfully applied in

165-623: A commercial product whose core is based on the AGPL-licensed Gendl Project, addresses the issue of application longevity by providing a high-level declarative language kernel which is a superset of a standard dialect of the Lisp programming language ( ANSI Common Lisp , or CL). Gendl/GDL itself is proposed as a de facto standard for ANSI CL-based KBE languages. In 2006, the Object Management Group released

220-411: A device known as a current balance is used to define the ampere operationally. Unlike temperature and electric current , there is no abstract physical concept of the hardness of a material. It is a slightly vague, subjective idea, somewhat like the idea of intelligence . In fact, it leads to three more specific ideas: Of these, indentation hardness itself leads to many operational definitions,

275-540: A domain that are more general, such as the ontological , etc. Science uses computing. Computing uses science. We have seen the development of computer science. There are not many who can bridge all three of these. One effect is that, when results are obtained using a computer, the results can be impossible to replicate if the code is poorly documented, contains errors, or if parts are omitted entirely. Many times, issues are related to persistence and clarity of use of variables, functions, and so forth. Also, systems dependence

330-421: A more generic nature than it will with CAx . A natural area of emphasis is on the production process; however, lifecycle management can cover many more issues such as business planning, marketing, etc. An advantage of using KBE is getting the automated reasoning and knowledge management services of a knowledge-based environment integrated with the many diverse but related needs of lifecycle management. KBE supports

385-405: A real-world object, its abstracted counterparts as defined by the domain and its experts, and the computer models. Mismatches between domain models and their computational mirrors can raise issues apropos this topic. Techniques that allow the flexible modeling required for many hard problems must resolve issues of identity, type, etc. which then lead to methods, such as duck typing. Many domains, with

440-428: A set of observations. The definition may contain implicit inductions and deductive consequences that are part of the theory. A theoretical definition of a term can change, over time, based on the methods in the field that created it. Without a falsifiable operational definition , conceptual definitions assume both knowledge and acceptance of the theories that it depends on. A hypothetical construct may serve as

495-403: A simple conversation test (e.g. Turing test ). Others believe that better theoretical and operational definitions are required. Knowledge-based engineering Knowledge-based engineering ( KBE ) is the application of knowledge-based systems technology to the domain of manufacturing design and production. The design process is inherently a knowledge-intensive activity, so a great deal of

550-511: A subject matter area becomes a discipline when there are more than a dozen university departments using the same name for roughly the same subject matter. Theoretical definition A theoretical definition defines a term in an academic discipline, functioning as a proposal to see a phenomenon in a certain way. A theoretical definition is a proposed way of thinking about potentially related events. Theoretical definitions contain built-in theories; they cannot be simply reduced to describing

605-478: A theoretical definition, as can a stipulative definition . The term scientific theory is reserved for concepts that are widely accepted. A scientific law often refers to regularities that can be expressed by a mathematical statement. However, there is no consensus about the distinction between these terms. Every scientific concept must have an operational definition , however the operational definition can use both direct observations and latent variables . In

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660-453: A wide scope that covers the full range of activities related to Product Lifecycle Management and Multidisciplinary design optimization . KBE's scope includes design, analysis ( computer-aided engineering – CAE), manufacturing , and support. In this inclusive role, KBE has to cover a large multi-disciplinary role related to many computer-aided technologies ( CAx ). There are two primary ways that KBE can be implemented: An early example of

715-572: Is a specific constellation of stars in the sky, hence the process of forming Virgo cannot be an operational definition, since it is historical and not repeatable. Nevertheless, the process whereby we locate Virgo in the sky is repeatable, so in this way, Virgo is operationally defined. In fact, Virgo can have any number of definitions (although we can never prove that we are talking about the same Virgo), and any number may be operational. New academic disciplines appear in response to interdisciplinary activity at universities. An academic suggested that

770-462: Is a trade-off between trying to teach programming to a domain expert versus getting a programmer to understand the intricacies of a domain. That, of course, depends upon the domain. In short, any team member has to decide which side of the coin to spend one's time. The International Society for Technology in Education has a brochure detailing an "operational definition" of computational thinking. At

825-527: Is all highly abstract and unsuited for the day-to-day world of science and trade. In order to make the idea concrete, temperature is defined in terms of operations with the gas thermometer. However, these are sophisticated and delicate instruments, only adapted to the national standardization laboratory. For day-to-day use, the International Temperature Scale of 1990 (ITS) is used, defining temperature in terms of characteristics of

880-418: Is an issue. In brief, length (as a standard) has matter as its definitional basis. What pray tell can be used when standards are to be computationally framed? Hence, operational definition can be used within the realm of the interactions of humans with advanced computational systems. In this sense, one area of discourse deals with computational thinking in, and with how it might influence, the sciences. To quote

935-460: Is between expressive power and computability. As Levesque demonstrated in his classic paper on the topic, the more powerful a knowledge-representation formalism one designs, the closer the formalism will come to the expressive power of first order logic. As Levesque also demonstrated, the closer a language is to First Order Logic, the more probable that it will allow expressions that are undecidable or require exponential processing power to complete. In

990-526: Is relatively supported by research , though there are challenges . Differing theoretical definitions of "thinking" have caused conflict amongst artificial intelligence philosophers , illustrated for example by the different responses to the Chinese room experiment. Some philosophers might call "thought" merely "having the ability to convince another person that you can think" . An operational definition corresponding to this theoretical definition could be

1045-424: Is still evolving. The definitions of substances as various configurations of atoms are theoretical definitions, as are definitions of colors as specific wavelengths of reflected light. The first postulate of special relativity theory that the speed of light in vacuum is the same to all inertial observers (i.e. it is a constant, and therefore a good measure of length). Of interest, this theoretical concept

1100-465: Is the basis of an operational definition for the length of a metre is "the distance traveled by light in a vacuum during a time interval of 1/299,792,458 of a second " . Thus we have defined 'metre' according to other ideas contained in modern scientific theory. Rejection of the theory underlying a theoretical definition leaves the definition invalid for use in argument with those who reject it — neither side will advance its position by using terms

1155-605: The West Gate Bridge in Melbourne , Australia collapsed, killing 35 construction workers. The subsequent enquiry found that the failure arose because engineers had specified the supply of a quantity of flat steel plate. The word flat in this context lacked an operational definition, so there was no test for accepting or rejecting a particular shipment or for controlling quality. In his managerial and statistical writings, W. Edwards Deming placed great importance on

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1210-429: The duck test 's necessity arises) that even an expert cannot overcome. The end proof may be the final results (reasonable facsimile by simulation or artifact , working design, etc.) that are not guaranteed to be repeatable, may have been costly to attain (time and money), and so forth. In advanced modeling, with the requisite computational support such as knowledge-based engineering, mappings must be maintained between

1265-587: The 1980s. It was part of the initial wave of investment in Artificial Intelligence for business that fueled expert systems. Like expert systems, it relied on what at the time were leading edge advances in corporate information technology such as PCs , workstations , and client-server architectures . These same technologies were also facilitating the growth of CAx and CAD software . CAD tended to drive leading edge technologies and even push them past their current limits. The best example of this

1320-552: The American Scientist: One referenced project pulled together fluid experts, including some who were expert in the numeric modeling related to computational fluid dynamics, in a team with computer scientists. Essentially, it turned out that the computer guys did not know enough to weigh in as much as they would have liked. Thus, their role, to their chagrin, many times was "mere" programmer. Some knowledge-based engineering projects experienced similarly that there

1375-458: The CAx domain typically referred to as Computer Aided Design (CAD). In this sense KBE is analogous to Knowledge-Based Software Engineering , which extended the domain of Computer Aided Software Engineering with knowledge-based tools and technology. What KBSE was to software and CASE, KBE is to manufactured products and CAD. An example can be taken from Boeing's experience. The 777 Program took on

1430-410: The CAx platform and are a normal part of the operation. One of the most important knowledge-based technologies for KBE is knowledge management . Knowledge management tools support a wide spectrum repository, i.e., a repository that can support all different types of work artifacts: informal drawings and notes, large database tables, multimedia and hypertext objects, etc. Knowledge management provides

1485-455: The KEE environment. These capabilities included an event model, random distribution generators, simulation visualization, and more. The Simkit tool was an early example of KBE. It could define a simulation in terms of class models and rules and then run the simulation as a conventional simulation would. Along the way, the simulation could continue to invoke rules, demons, and object methods, providing

1540-566: The case of KBE, the interest was perhaps strongest in the business-to-business type of electronic commerce and technologies that facilitate the definition of industry standard vocabularies and ontologies for manufactured products . The semantic web is the vision of Tim Berners Lee for the next generation of the Internet. This will be a knowledge-based Internet built on ontologies , objects , and frame technologies that were also enabling technologies for KBE. Important technologies for

1595-466: The case of the 777, the project got to where influences to changes in the early part of the design/build stream (loads) could be recomputed over a weekend to allow evaluation by downstream processes. As required, engineers were in the loop to finish and sign off on work. At the same time, CAx allowed tighter tolerances to be met. With the 777, KBE was so successful that subsequent programs applied it in more areas. Over time, KBE facilities were integrated into

1650-425: The challenge of having a digitally-defined plane. That required an investment in large-scale systems, databases, and workstations for design and analytical engineering work. Given the magnitude of the computing work that was required, KBE got its toe in the door, so to speak, through a "pay as you go plan." Essentially, this technique was to show benefits and then to obtain more work (think agile engineering) thereby. In

1705-653: The decision processes involved with configuration, trades, control, management, and a number of other areas, such as optimization . CAx refers to the domain of computer-aided tools for analysis and design. CAx spans multiple domains. Examples are computer-aided design of manufactured parts, software, the architecture of buildings, etc. Although each specific domain of CAx will have very different kinds of problems and artifacts, they all share common issues as well such as having to manage collaboration of sophisticated knowledge workers, design and re-use of complex artifacts, etc. Essentially KBE extends, builds on, and integrates with

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1760-541: The design team due to knowledge management, improved re-use of design artifacts, and automation of major parts of the product lifecycle. KBE is essentially engineering on the basis of knowledge models . A knowledge model uses knowledge representation to represent the artifacts of the design process (as well as the process itself) rather than or in addition to conventional programming and database techniques. The advantages to using knowledge representation to model industrial engineering tasks and artifacts are: KBE can have

1815-531: The early part of the 20th century. However, computation has changed the landscape. He notes that we need to distinguish four levels of "irreversible physical and computational abstraction" (Platonic abstraction, computational approximation, functional abstraction, and value computation). Then, we must rely on interactive methods, that have behavior as their focus (see duck test). The thermodynamic definition of temperature , due to Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot , refers to heat "flowing" between "infinite reservoirs". This

1870-547: The emphasis for KBE is on the use of knowledge-based technology to support computer-aided design (CAD) however knowledge-based techniques (e.g. knowledge management) can be applied to the entire product lifecycle . The CAD domain has always been an early adopter of software-engineering techniques used in knowledge-based systems, such as object-orientation and rules . Knowledge-based engineering integrates these technologies with CAD and other traditional engineering software tools. Benefits of KBE include improved collaboration of

1925-503: The first approach was the Simkit tool developed by Intellicorp in the 1980s. Simkit was developed on top of Intellicorp's Knowledge Engineering Environment (KEE). KEE was a very powerful knowledge-based systems development environment. KEE started on Lisp and added frames , objects , and rules , as well as powerful additional tools, such as hypothetical reasoning and truth maintenance. Simkit added stochastic simulation capabilities to

1980-427: The hardness number can be used to predict the stress required to permanently deform steel, a characteristic that fits in well with our idea of resistance to permanent deformation. However, there is not always a simple relationship between the various hardness scales. Vickers and Rockwell hardness numbers exhibit qualitatively different behaviour when used to describe some materials and phenomena. The constellation Virgo

2035-530: The implementation of KBE systems, this trade off is reflected in the choice to use powerful knowledge-based environments or more conventional procedural and object-oriented programming environments. There is a trade off between using standards such as STEM and vendor- or business-specific proprietary languages. Standardization facilitates knowledge sharing , integration, and re-use. Proprietary formats (such as CATIA) can provide competitive advantage and powerful features beyond current standardization. Genworks GDL,

2090-557: The implementation step, which is not always the main bottleneck in the KBE development process. In order to limit the risk associated with the development and maintenance of KBE application, there is a need to rely on an appropriate methodology for managing the knowledge and maintaining it up to date. As example of such KBE methodology, the EU project MOKA, "Methodology and tools Oriented to Knowledge based Applications," proposes solutions which focus on

2145-638: The introduction of operational definitions for simultaneity of events and of distance , that is, as providing the operations needed to define these terms. In quantum mechanics the notion of operational definitions is closely related to the idea of observables , that is, definitions based upon what can be measured. Operational definitions are often most challenging in the fields of psychology and psychiatry , where intuitive concepts, such as intelligence need to be operationally defined before they become amenable to scientific investigation, for example, through processes such as IQ tests . On October 15, 1970,

2200-636: The limits of the computers of the time. Simkit could run simulations with thousands of objects and do very sophisticated analysis on those objects. However, industrial simulations often required tens or hundreds of thousands of objects, and Simkit had difficulty scaling up to such levels. The second alternative to developing KBE is illustrated by the CATIA product suite. CATIA started with products for CAD and other traditional industrial engineering applications and added knowledge-based capabilities on to them; for example, their KnowledgeWare module. KBE developed in

2255-514: The most important of which are: In all these, a process is defined for loading the indenter, measuring the resulting indentation, and calculating a hardness number. Each of these three sequences of measurement operations produces numbers that are consistent with our subjective idea of hardness. The harder the material to our informal perception, the greater the number it will achieve on our respective hardness scales. Furthermore, experimental results obtained using these measurement methods has shown that

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2310-401: The natural sciences, a concept is an abstract conclusion drawn from observations. Social and health sciences interact with non-empirical fields and use both observation based and pre-existing concepts such as intelligence, race, and gender. Most interdisciplinary fields are designed to address specific real world concerns and the status of theoretical definitions in interdisciplinary fields

2365-419: The others do not accept . Heat explains a collection of various laws of nature and that predict certain results. In psychology, the concept of intelligence is meant to explain correlations in performance on certain cognitive tasks. Recent models suggest several cognitive processes may be involved in tasks that have been associated with intelligence. However, overall the "g" or general intelligence factor

2420-458: The physical and mental operations used to measure them. Accordingly, the definition of each unobservable entity was uniquely identified with the instrumentation used to define it. From the beginning objections were raised to this approach, in large part around the inflexibility. As Boyd notes, "In actual, and apparently reliable, scientific practice, changes in the instrumentation associated with theoretical terms are routine. and apparently crucial to

2475-421: The potential for much richer simulation as well as analysis than conventional simulation tools. One of the issues that Simkit faced was a common issue for most early KBE systems developed with this method: The Lisp knowledge-based environments provide very powerful knowledge representation and reasoning capabilities; however, they did so at the cost of massive requirements for memory and processing that stretched

2530-443: The process of heating water at sea level until it is observed to boil. A cake can be operationally defined by a cake recipe. Despite the controversial philosophical origins of the concept, particularly its close association with logical positivism , operational definitions have undisputed practical applications. This is especially so in the social and medical sciences, where operational definitions of key terms are used to preserve

2585-556: The progress of science. According to a 'pure' operationalist conception, these sorts of modifications would not be methodologically acceptable, since each definition must be considered to identify a unique 'object' (or class of objects)." However, this rejection of operationalism as a general project destined ultimately to define all experiential phenomena uniquely did not mean that operational definitions ceased to have any practical use or that they could not be applied in particular cases. The special theory of relativity can be viewed as

2640-554: The same time, the ISTE made an attempt at defining related skills. A recognized skill is tolerance for ambiguity and being able to handle open-ended problems. For instance, a knowledge-based engineering system can enhance its operational aspect and thereby its stability through more involvement by the subject-matter expert , thereby opening up issues of limits that are related to being human. As in, many times, computational results have to be taken at face value due to several factors (hence

2695-446: The semantic web are XML , RDF , and OWL . The semantic web has excellent potential for KBE, and KBE ontologies and projects are a strong area for current research. Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is the management of the manufacturing process of any industry that produces goods. It can span the full product lifecycle from idea generation to implementation, delivery, and disposal. KBE at this level will deal with product issues of

2750-411: The several specific sensor types required to cover the full range. One such is the electrical resistance of a thermistor , with specified construction, calibrated against operationally defined fixed points. Electric current is defined in terms of the force between two infinite parallel conductors, separated by a specified distance. This definition is too abstract for practical measurement, so

2805-576: The structuring and formalization steps as well as links to the implementation. An alternative to MOKA is to use general knowledge engineering methods that have been developed for expert systems across all industries or to use general software development methodologies such as the Rational Unified Process or Agile methods . Two critical issues for the languages and formalisms used for KBE are: A fundamental trade-off identified with knowledge representation in artificial intelligence

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2860-516: The unambiguous empirical testability of hypothesis and theory. Operational definitions are also important in the physical sciences . The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on scientific realism, written by Richard Boyd , indicates that the modern concept owes its origin in part to Percy Williams Bridgman , who felt that the expression of scientific concepts was often abstract and unclear. Inspired by Ernst Mach , in 1914 Bridgman attempted to redefine unobservable entities concretely in terms of

2915-406: The value of using operational definitions in all agreements in business. As he said: Operational , in a process context, also can denote a working method or a philosophy that focuses principally on cause and effect relationships (or stimulus/response, behavior, etc.) of specific interest to a particular domain at a particular point in time. As a working method, it does not consider issues related to

2970-407: The various group support tools to help diverse stake holders collaborate on the design and implementation of products. It also provides tools to automate the design process (e.g., rules) and to facilitate re-use. The development of KBE applications concerns the requirements to identify, capture, structure, formalize, and finally implement knowledge. Many different so-called KBE platforms support only

3025-467: Was object-oriented programming and database technology, which were adapted by CAD when most corporate information technology shops were dominated by relational databases and procedural programming . As with expert systems, KBE suffered a downturn during the AI Winter . Also, as with expert systems and artificial intelligence technology in general, there was renewed interest with the Internet. In

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