A Planner for Exploratory Data Analysis

Statistical exploratory data analysis (EDA) poses a difficult search problem. The EDA process lends itself however to a planning formulation. We have built a system, called AIDE, to help users explore data. AIDE relies on partial hierarchical planning, a form of planning appropriate for tasks in complex. uncertain environments. Our description of the EDA task and the AIDE system provides a case study of the applicat ion of plamdng to a novel domain.