Human plausible reasoning for intelligent help

This paper is about providing intelligent help to users interacting with an operating system. Its main focus is an investigation of Human Plausible Reasoning Theory (Collins & Michalski, 1989) to infer the commands the user should have typed, given what they did type. The theory has been adapted and incorporated into a prototype Intelligent Help System (IHS) for UNIX users, called RESCUER, and has been used for the generation and evaluation of hypotheses about users'' beliefs underlying the observed users'' actions on the UNIX file store. The hypotheses generated by RESCUER were compared to those made by human experts on the sample scripts from UNIX user sessions. The potential for Human Plausible Reasoning as a mechanism to reason about slips and misconceptions is discussed.