---
title: "Learning and reasoning by analogy — paper by Winston (1980)"
description: "Winston tackles the problem of how a program can use a familiar situation, a precedent , to draw conclusions about a… Cited by 9 papers here."
authors: ["Patrick H. Winston"]
year: 1980
venue: "Communications of the ACM"
source: "https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/5732"
licence: "All rights reserved — free to read at the source"
summary_licence: "Elamur Cosmic License"
canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/winston-1980-learning-reasoning-analogy/"
---
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# Learning and reasoning by analogy

**Authors:** Patrick H. Winston · **Year:** 1980 · **Venue:** [Communications of the ACM](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/communications-of-the-acm/) ([Communications of the ACM 1980](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/communications-of-the-acm/1980/)) · **Publisher:** [Association for Computing Machinery](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/publishers/association-for-computing-machinery/) · **Licence:** All rights reserved — free to read at the source

**Links:** [Publisher's page](https://doi.org/10.1145/359038.359042) · [PDF](https://dspace.mit.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/2d8614bf-1966-4a5f-9ace-8ff10f2aaf3a/content) · [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W2094848746)

**Citations:** 518 citations (OpenAlex, 2026-10-14) · [9](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/winston-1980-learning-reasoning-analogy/cited-by/) in our library, of the 149,439 papers whose bibliographies we read

## Summary
Winston tackles the problem of how a program can use a familiar situation, a *precedent*, to draw conclusions about a new one, an *exercise*. Situations, such as compressed plot outlines of Shakespeare plays like *Macbeth*, are encoded as semantic networks. These networks capture the participants, their properties and the relations among them. The central step is matching. Not all relations count equally: causal links between events steer which parts of the precedent are paired with which parts of the exercise. Once a match is found, the program transfers knowledge from the precedent to answer questions about the exercise or to make plausible guesses about it. It can also record what it has learned as a reusable rule, so a single example yields a generalization. The work matters because it was an early, influential computational account of analogy. It shows that weighting causal structure, rather than surface similarity, makes matching both feasible and meaningful. It shaped later research on case-based and precedent-based reasoning.

## Key points
- Published in *Communications of the ACM* (vol. 23, no. 12, 1980). It is related to an earlier MIT AI Lab memo version.
- Situations are written as networks of parts, properties and relations, and these networks are matched against each other.
- Matching favours important relations, especially causal ones, over superficial resemblance.
- Shakespearean plot summaries, notably *Macbeth*, serve as test precedents and exercises.
- **Caveat:** the PDF text provided for this paper was empty (all 64 pages blank). This summary is based on the paper's widely known content and should be checked against the original before citing.

*Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.*

## Institutions

- [Massachusetts Institute of Technology](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/massachusetts-institute-of-technology/) — University, Cambridge, United States · 274 works · 82,013 citations

📚 Shelves (4): [🖥️ Computer Science](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/computer-science/) · 19,503 works · [🤖 Artificial Intelligence](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/computer-science/artificial-intelligence/) · 18,805 works · [💭 Psychology](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/psychology/) · 1,673 works · [💭 Experimental and Cognitive Psychology](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/psychology/experimental-and-cognitive-psychology/) · 950 works

🧭 Topics (1): [🧮 Reasoning](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/reasoning/) · 1,948 works

## Cite

Cite as: Patrick H. Winston. 1980. Learning and reasoning by analogy. Communications of the ACM.

The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work.

```bibtex
@inproceedings{winston1980learning,
  title = {{Learning and reasoning by analogy}},
  author = {Patrick H. Winston},
  booktitle = {Communications of the ACM},
  year = {1980},
  doi = {10.1145/359038.359042},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/359038.359042}
}
```

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*Updated 3 November 2026*