Expert Systems

An expert system is a computer program that draws on the knowledge of human experts captured in a knowledge base to solve problems that normally require human expertise.   The system emulates expert thought to solve significant problems in a particular domain of expertise.   In its simplest form, an expert system has three major components: An interface, monitor and key board that allows two way communications between the user and the system.   The system generally has an inference/reasoning engine where the knowledge is extracted and manipulated to solve the problem at hand.   Inference engine strategies may be either forward chaining, which involves the system reasoning from data and information gained by consultation from the user to form a hypothesis, or backward chaining, which involves the system starting with a hypothesis and then attempting to find data and information to prove or disprove the hypothesis. Both strategies are included in most expert systems.
Expert Systems can be found in almost every sector of business as well as Federal, State and local agencies.   The financial sector has benefited greatly from the use of Decision Support Systems in the forecast of stocks and trading support.   AIQ is a company that provides an expert trading system that helps investor's makes decisions based on millions of computations and reports listing the securities, groups, sectors, futures, indexes, and mutual funds that have passed a screening process.   The users of AIQ's TradingExpert Pro can rely on the reports to find hidden opportunities, and to alert them to critical price, volume, and trend changes.   This AI-based trading system provides several tools for determining market direction and for anticipating reversals in market direction (http://www.aiqsystems.com).  
Another sector that is thriving in the use of expert systems is the medical field.   Pharmaceutical companies have been using expert systems for years to identify different formulas in prescriptions...