Case-based reasoning is one of the fastest growing areas in the field of knowledge-based systems and this book, authored by a leader in the field, is the first comprehensive text on the subject. Case-based reasoning systems are systems that store information about situations in their memory. As new problems arise, similar situations are searched out to help solve these problems. Problems are understood and inferences are made by finding the closest cases in memory, comparing and contrasting the problem with those cases, making inferences based on those comparisons, and asking questions whe