David, (01)
I think we are cross purposes, I never suggested numbers. I should maybe
explain a little more about the project I am working on. We are
developing a formal semantic model of terms in the financial services
industry, and to do this we are using the underlying concepts of OWL but
restating these in English. In OWL there are classes (with the
super-class of owl:Thing), and two types or properties, Object
Properties and Datatype Properties. We refer to the OWL Classes as
"Things" and properties as "Facts" namely "Relationship Facts" and
"Simple Facts" respectively. These are modeled in a UML modeling tool
from which we produce both diagrams and spreadsheets, for review via a
website (this is at www.hypercube.co.uk/edmcouncil ). (02)
Anyway, each "Thing" and each "Fact" has a label which is a simple
textual name for that term, using whatever term business domain experts
are most comfortable with. Other words with precisely the same meaning
are identified as "Synonym" using a tag set up for that purpose. For
instance the other day I renamed "MBS Issue" to "MBS Deal" since I
learnt that's what they call it most often, and put the previous name
into the "Synonym" tag. They mean the same thing, a kind of "Production"
with a prospectus and an issuer and an underlying pool of mortgages, and
which gives rise to a number of individual MBS securities (synonym MBS
Tranches) based on that pool. Those are the facts, and the sum of them
is its meaning - you now know what an MBS Deal is. (03)
You are right that context is needed to deal with meaning. One can
either come up with contextual display arrangements such as hover help,
or use semantic modelling, such as OWL, which implements (albeit
imperfectly) the fundamentals of logic. Using a semantic notation then
allows us to formally define what a term means, both by its position in
a taxonomy (so Linnaeus' Taxonomy of Species tells us what kind of thing
a lynx is), and by the logical statement of facts about those things.
The facts are what distinguishes an ontology from a taxonomy, in most
accepted definitions of those two words. (04)
The difficult bit is keeping that definitional rigour and yet presenting
the information in ways that subject matter experts can understand. The
logic is every bit as complex as any programming concepts, but has no
relation to software development concepts, so it takes a while to
communicate this to the subject matter experts, in my experience. Also
some business folks are more comfortable looking at spreadsheets whereas
others are better looking at diagrams - this is a difference between
different people in any walk of life. Hence we represent all the same
information in both formats. It still isn't easy, but it means that for
every term on the diagram or in the spreadsheet, there are enough
qualifying terms around it to precisely disambiguate it from any terms
that might have the same or a similar name (heteronyms). It should be
possible to take any one term and rename it "banana" and still identify
what is meant by banana in that context, if it's modeled right. (05)
They say "meaning is context" and that's sort of true in a trivial way,
but all the context should be definable in an ontology if it's set up
right. (06)
I hope that is a bit clearer. (07)
Mike (08)
David Eddy wrote:
> Mike -
>
> On May 31, 2010, at 1:30 PM, Mike Bennett wrote:
>
>
>> We don't rely on words for meanings, and I see no reason why anyone
>> would. Terms are either Things or Facts, and each of these has a label
>> which happens to be whichever word business domain experts are most
>> comfortable with, and any number of synonyms which are other words
>> with
>> the same meaning.
>>
>
> This looses me.
>
> Best as I've experienced, humans tend to be strongly attached to
> terms/words/phrases having meanings. I am NOT in favor of using
> numbers to represent meaning to humans.
>
> Naturally a huge issue here is that I see a word, recognize it & am
> comfortable with the implicit meaning. You see the same word, which
> evokes a different meaning (say "Table" in context of running a
> meeting, not furniture, in American English & UK English). We're
> both comfortable with what we assume to be the meaning, but one of us
> is wrong.
>
> What I want to see is a term/word/phrase/acronym plus various
> available CONTEXTUAL meanings. In a document where there are
> potentially ambiguous terms, there could be "footnotes," tags, or
> "hovering help" expressing explicit meaning.
>
>
>
> What do you mean by "Terms are either Things or Facts"?
>
> ___________________
> David Eddy
> deddy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> 781-455-0949
>
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Message Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/
> Config Subscr: http://ontolog.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/ontolog-forum/
> Unsubscribe: mailto:ontolog-forum-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Shared Files: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/
> Community Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/wiki/
> To join: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WikiHomePage#nid1J
> To Post: mailto:ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
>
>
> (09)
--
Mike Bennett
Director
Hypercube Ltd.
89 Worship Street
London EC2A 2BF
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7917 9522
Mob: +44 (0) 7721 420 730
www.hypercube.co.uk
Registered in England and Wales No. 2461068 (010)
_________________________________________________________________
Message Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/
Config Subscr: http://ontolog.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/ontolog-forum/
Unsubscribe: mailto:ontolog-forum-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Shared Files: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/
Community Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/wiki/
To join: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WikiHomePage#nid1J
To Post: mailto:ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (011)
|