Toward Intelligent Decision Support Systems: An Artificially Intelligent Statistician.

There are three important considerations in DSS development. (1) Decision making involves both primary and secondary processes, where secondary processes concern selecting appropriate decision making tools, approaches, and information. (2) In making decisions, humans are subject to numerous cognitive limitations. (3) In order for end users to develop DSS, sophisticated, problem-oriented DSS generators must replace technically demanding DSS tools. These three considerations can be effectively addressed by including expert system components in DSS. An expert DSS for statistical analysis is proposed and used as an illustration. Decision making scenarios are used to indicate the potential of such a system. In particular, it appears that an expert DSS can provide support for both primary and secondary decision making and help ameliorate human cognitive limitations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]