On Mon, May 31, 2010 15:42, Mike Bennett said:
> ... 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. (01)
Could you clarify? Since OWL Classes are a sub-class of Thing, shouldn't
the instances of the OWL Classes be "Things"? Likewise, shouldn't "Facts"
be the assignment of Properties to Things? (02)
> 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 ). (03)
> 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. (04)
I'm pleased that you distinguish labels from names at this point.
However, below you discuss "names", not labels. (05)
A solution to the problems you discuss may lie in distinguishing an
internal name for a term (which is used by programs for access and
processing) from labels which identify the terms to users. In other
areas of computer science, the users of programs have no idea of what
internal names are used in programs and could care less. Why should
semantic programs make internal names visible to users? (06)
> 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. (07)
If EnglishWords and Phrases had denotations as terms and terms had
preferred phrases (which could vary by context), then renaming would
not be an issue. Internally, an OWL Class named MortgageBackedSecurityIssue
could have have "MBS Issue" as a preferred denotation. In the given
case, it would also become a denotation "MBS Deal", which (in the new
context) would become its preferred phrase. (08)
A company in Saginaw, Michigan, could use the same ontology, adding
a Class named MBSAirportBondIssue, giving that as a denotation of "MBS
Issue", which might be its preferred phrase. (09)
How to deal with conflicting inputs would be up to the API, which could
have context-related rules. (010)
> 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. (011)
> The difficult bit is keeping that definitional rigour and yet presenting
> the information in ways that subject matter experts can understand. (012)
Once you separate the internal name from the phrase presented to the
user, this becomes easier. Hover help can certainly assist. As could
contextual choice of phrase to produce. (013)
> 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. (014)
I question this. There is a distinction between providing enough infor-
mation to distinguish homonyms and having enough information to precisely
define a term. (015)
Using the distinction i raised at the beginning, you are referring to
relabeling a single term in user output, not internally renaming it. The
internal name need have no bearing on the output text. (016)
> 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. (017)
Agreed. (018)
-- doug foxvog (019)
> I hope that is a bit clearer.
>
>
> Mike
>
> 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
begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 781-455-0949 end_of_the_skype_highlighting
>>
>>
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>>
>
>
> --
> Mike Bennett
> Director
> Hypercube Ltd.
> 89 Worship Street
> London EC2A 2BF
> Tel: +44 (0) 20 7917 9522
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>
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=============================================================
doug foxvog doug@xxxxxxxxxx http://ProgressiveAustin.org (021)
"I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great
initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours."
- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
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