Overview

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The FACTORFINDER-Software supports data collection and evaluates the data. The data is provided by the analyst. The analyst adds new examples to the example base and states whether these examples perform acceptable or inacceptable. Thereafter, the computer program begins the calculations.
The analyst contributes new factors and adds the respective values for all examples. It is the analysts responsibility to assure the completeness and validity of the data. The FACTORFINDER-Software records the data and finds the relevance values. All further procedure steps necessary to calculate relevance information is done autonomously by the program. The analyst is not required to give further directions to the program. So the analyst can concentrate on providing data input to the program. From all examples the FACTORFINDER-Software identifies those variants that come closest to the ideal variants. Additionally, those examples are found that differ in important factors from all other examples. The FACTORFINDER-Software consists of three components:

1. A first module manages the input of new examples and revisions of known examples. This module shall automaticly check the consistency of input and shall be intuitively usable. The user interfaces guides through the analysis. The analyst determines what factors shall be included in the procedure.

2. A second module generates relevance hypothesis from comparisons of the examples.

3. A third module combines both preceeding modules. The plausibility of all available examples and the plausibility of the generated relevance hypothesis is checked. As a result, those variants are marked that differ extremely from all other variants. Additionally, the examples are marked that seem to show ideal values.