Automated Modeling of Physical Systems

P. Pandurang Nayak (auth.)3540606416, 9783540606413

This book is based on the author’s PhD thesis which was selected during the 1993 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Competition as one of the three best submissions.
This monograph investigates the problem of selecting adequate models for reasoning about physical systems and applications to engineering problem solving. An elegant treatment of both the theoretical and practical sides are presented: the problem is precisely formalized, its computational complexity is analyzed in detail, and an efficient algorithm for finding adequate models is derived; on the practical side, a methodology for building systems that automatically construct adequate models is provided, and implementational aspects and tests are described.

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Table of contents :
Introduction….Pages 1-12
Models and model fragments….Pages 13-32
Adequate models….Pages 33-59
Complexity of model selection….Pages 61-85
Causal approximations….Pages 87-118
Differential equations….Pages 119-144
Order of magnitude reasoning….Pages 145-167
Model selection program and results….Pages 169-188
Related work….Pages 189-196
Conclusions….Pages 197-200