State inference in a heterogeneous system

Abstract

The invention relates to inferring the state of a system of interest having a plurality of indicator values and possibly being heterogeneous in nature. A number of indicator values from a control state and from a comparison state are gathered. From these indicator values, classification power between the control and comparison states (measure of goodness) is computed. Difference values are computed for the indicator values from the system of interest based on the difference to the indicator values from control and comparison states. From a number of these indicators, composite indicators are formed, and composite measures of goodness and composite difference values are computed. A plurality of composite indicators may be formed at different levels. These indicators may be represented as a tree and grouped according to content, and at the same time they may be arranged according to the measure of goodness or some other value. The indicators, measures of goodness, and difference values may be visualized and shown to a user, who may use such a representation for inferring the state of the system.

Description

FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0001]The invention relates to a method of inferring the state of a system and classifying data. The invention relates to an apparatus and a system for inferring the state of a system and visualizing the state. The invention relates to the computer program product for inferring the state of a system and visualizing the state.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0002]Any arbitrary system of interest can have at least two states. The system of interest can be, for example, an apparatus, a human body, or a financial entity. Typically, the system of interest either functions correctly (normal state) or has a malfunction (error state). There may be several normal and / or error states. A good example is the healthiness of a human being: he or she can be healthy (normal state) or have a disease (error state), in which case the number of the error states may be large. The state of the system of interest defines which normal or error state the system of interest is in and how muc...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

The invention provides a method and apparatus for using indicators to determine the state of a system. The method involves defining indicators in the system, measuring the values of these indicators in a control state and a comparison state, and calculating the difference between these values. The difference is then used to infer the state of the system. The technical effect of this invention is to provide a more accurate and reliable method for determining the state of a system using indicators.

Problems solved by technology

However, in many applications the computerized methods cannot make the final decision because of possible erroneous measurements and uncertainty in the data, or merely because the computer cannot fully mimic the knowledge and experience of an expert.

The different values and data may be at least partially conflicting, and the data may be heterogeneous so that combining the data heuristically or numerically may be difficult and unreliable.

Determining the state of the system may therefore be very time-consuming and prone to errors in interpretation.

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