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∂AIL Professor Omar Wing, Chairman↓Department of Electrical Engineering
and Computer Science↓Columbia University↓New York, N.Y. 10027∞

Dear Professor Wing:

	This is in reply to your letter of December 14 asking for an
assessment of Robert Filman.  (Note that his name has but one "l").

	Filman has been my thesis advisee, and he has also worked
as a research assistant for the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory under
my direct supervision.

	His thesis, in first draft form as of December 1977, undertakes
for the first time to formalize reasoning that has a substantial component
of observation as well as logical inference.  Because the interaction
between observation and inference was not well understood, several attempts
were necessary, and the final result is quite lengthy.  Filman has managed
very well to handle the large amount of detail and, simultaneously, to
identify several new concepts involved in this kind of reasoning.

	Filman works well independently and has a strong research motivation.
On the basis of these facts, I can recommend him strongly for a faculty
appointment in a computer science department.

.sgn