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Re: [ontolog-forum] vague wish lists VS formal specifications

To: "Chris Partridge" <mail@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: "[ontolog-forum] " <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: Pat Hayes <phayes@xxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2007 11:03:23 -0600
Message-id: <p06230902c204cb78aa73@[10.100.0.26]>
>Hi Pat,
>
>Agree with your point. But can I ask for some more detail.
>
>The reason in I have great difficulty in getting others to recognise this
>point (for some my personal authority is insufficient :-) ).
>
>I usually quote Searle, who has quite a few comments about law makers in
>this vein in the construction of social reality. Also Margaret Gilbert has
>comments in her on social facts.
>
>I shall now add Pat Hayes and IHMC to the list of authorities :-).    (01)

Well, better instead add Robert Hoffman, who is 
our resident expert in this area and uses Cmaps 
all the time. He also has used many other 
techniques, and has some actual empirical figures 
of concepts extracted per man-hour of analysis 
time which seem to show quite consistently that 
the collaborative Cmap construction technique 
(there is a whole methodology to it) gets close 
to an order-of-magnitude improvement, at least in 
the initial stages. Theyve applied it to (among 
others) nuclear power plant maintenance, weather 
forecasting, traditional Siamese folk weaving, 
naval training and various secret topics that we 
aren't allowed to know about.    (02)

>What would be nice is a few (authoritative) papers to point to as well. Do
>you know of any? Apologies if these are already well known to others.    (03)

I can get you citations, but not until next week 
when he gets back from travelling.    (04)

>As an aside, I have similar experiences to your KE mavens with concept maps
>(Novak's I presume)    (05)

Yes, though we have a number of bells and 
whistles added. We retain Joe as a consultant on 
the project.    (06)

I have many anecdotes. My favorite, which I 
myself witnessed, was a visit here from two 
senior execs from Proctor & Gamble (who make more 
money from information than they do from soap 
powder, and themselves use Cmaps extensively) to 
try out the Cmap collaboration tool. They weren't 
very convinced that they needed such an elaborate 
device, since they all knew what one another were 
talking about. We set them down at two computers 
at opposite ends of the lab and they decided to 
build a 'toy' Cmap about some management topic 
they were currently thinking about. By the time 
they got to the fourth concept node they were 
arguing heatedly about what the words meant. I 
had to go outside so I could laugh.    (07)

Pat    (08)

>in trying to get things clear.
>
>Regards,
>Chris Partridge
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>[mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Pat Hayes
>Sent: 23 February 2007 15:40
>To: matthew.west@xxxxxxxxx
>Cc: ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] vague wish lists VS formal specifications
>
>
>...
>>   > [Deborah McPherson]
>>   > With a checklist to follow, untrained customers will be better
>>   > prepared and able to state what their needs are and organize their
>>>   resources to provide ontology engineers, programmers, and formal
>>>   specification writers with what THEY need to get the data to flow in
>>>   potentially customized, atypical manners.
>>
>>MW: I disagree. My experience is that you need to take what the
>>customer says they need, and perform analysis to determine what they
>>really need.
>
>A quick note: our experience here (at IHMC) on expert knowledge
>extraction bears this out, in spades. There is an entire field
>devoted to techniques for discovering what customers/experts actually
>know and want, as opposed to what they think they know and want. (In
>case this idea offends, bear in mind that it applies to the people
>doing the analysis just as much as to everyone else.)
>
>For the record, our KE mavens (I am not one of them) tell me that one
>of the most efficient such analysis techniques involves collaborative
>construction of a concept map, which is one reason we have developed
>so much software around this apparently trivial notion.
>
>Pat Hayes
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40 South Alcaniz St.    (850)202 4416   office
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phayesAT-SIGNihmc.us       http://www.ihmc.us/users/phayes    (010)


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