A case for folk arguments in case-based reasoning

An approach to enhancement of case-based reasoning in situations where substantial amounts of the knowledge are expressed as informal or “folk” arguments is applied to the authentication (dating) of paintings. It emphasizes knowledge acquisition templates, indexing through numerical taxonomy and close attention to typing of the arguments. This work has shown that even simple types can be regarded as attributes of the arguments, hence attributes of their cases. The cases are then organized and retrieved through structuring of the case bases by methods of numerical taxonomy. Expertise expressed as texts of detailed reports on dating of paintings from historical and chemical knowledge is the source material from which the cases are constructed. Case bases with and without folk-argument knowledge, for the same paintings, are compared for their ability to assign correct date ranges. In this test, the performance of the case base containing argument knowledge is consistently superior.