A PROGRAM FOR THE SOLUTION OF A CLASS OF GEOMETRIC-ANALOGY INTELLIGENCE-TEST QUESTIONS.

A program was constructed for solving a wide variety of intelligence-test problems of the geometric-analogy type Figure A is to Figure B as Figure C is to which of the following figures. The program, which is written in the LISP language, uses heuristic methods to calculate, from relatively primitive representations of the input figures, descriptions of these figures in terms of subfigures and relations among them. It then utilizes these descriptions to find an appropriate rule and to apply it, modified as necessary, to arrive at an answer. The program solved a large number of such problems, including many taken directly from college-level intelligence tests. The novel organization of the program in terms of figure descriptions, which are analyzed to find transformation rules, and rule descriptions, which are analyzed to find common generalizations of pairs of transformation rules, has implications for the design of problem-solving programs and for machine learning. These implications are discussed at some length and suggestions are made for work on pattern-recognition and learning techniques based on ideas developed in the course of the present investigation. Author