Abstract
F. Conrad, R. Kamalich, J. Longacre, and D. Barry
(1993) "An Expert System for Reviewing Commodity
Substitutions in the Consumer Price Index," Proceedings
of the Ninth Conference on Artificial Intelligence for
Applications, Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
An expert system is being developed to help assure the
quality of data in the Consumer Price Index (CPI). The system
replicates the reasoning of Commodity Analysts determining if
a substitute product is comparable to a product priced in the
previous month. If comparable, its price can be considered in
producing the CPI. The system reasons with expertise directly
entered by Commodity Analysts. To help the experts (Commodity
Analysts) serve as their own knowledge engineers, they are
provided with a skeletal system to which they add their
knowledge of particular product categories. The system was
tested on six months of CPI data. Results indicate that
Commodity Analysts can accurately encode their own expertise
and use the technology to detect their own oversights. The
success of the current project may help other members of the
government statistical community collect and review survey
data using similar technology.
Last Modified Date: July 19, 2008
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