John, Simon, Ed, Godfrey et al,
Putting together all your comments, I conclude the following:
The knowledge that gets
represented in 90% of the KE/DE projects covers about one hour of the domain
expert's knowledge and one hour of the knowledge engineer's modeling skills,
though the two are still askew until another hour of debate and explanation,
during which each expert educates the other about the most basic items of
knowledge which represents the least common denominator of each expert's
wisdom.
If you give some thought to the precise phrasing I used, the point may
get across that the two "experts" are paid three hours to record just
one hour of knowledge as ROI for the time spent. A less well paid
nonexpert can then work three times as long to get one hour's work done after
s/he studies the recorded hour of knowledge for a few hours.
That doesn't sound like a successful project to me. I would just
let the nonexpert work without the extra knowledge indoctrination, at which
point s/he produces one hour's work per hour of pay if the same principles of
analysis hold for these two paragraphs.
So the ROI doesn't justify it. Its not simply that it doesn't
meet some arcane metric of goodness for ontologies, or knowledge, or slickness
of presentation, or rigidity of logical premises; it simply doesn't pay off.
-Rich
Sincerely,
Rich Cooper
EnglishLogicKernel.com
Rich AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com
9 4 9 \ 5 2 5 - 5 7 1 2
-----Original Message-----
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Godfrey Rust
Sent: Thursday, March 10, 2011 10:12 AM
To: [ontolog-forum]
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Using controlled natural languages for ontology
Spot on, Mike. Knowledge engineer needs to know just enough about the
domain, and domain expert needs to know just enough about the modelling
methods for you to overlap just enough in the middle. It is time
consuming
and usually hard work, but it certainly pays off. When they don't
overlap
enough, a great deal of money and opportunity can eventually vanish
down
that gap.
Godfrey
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Bennett" <mbennett@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "[ontolog-forum]" <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, March 10, 2011 6:04 PM
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Using controlled natural languages for
ontology
>
> Well I would put it the other way around - a knowledge engineer
> working with domain experts. I have managed to achieve some
> results with this. The key is for the knowledge engineer to
> recognize that they are not an expert, but that they know enough
> to put forward a model which is largely complete and correct
> (what the techie folks often call a "strawman"), and
then
> facilitate a session which involves changing that model, within
> its stated formalism, until it is a complete and correct record
> of the knowledge of the domain experts.
>
> For example, I just came off a session modeling loans
> semantically. It turns out that if we define a loan formally as
> "some amount of money extended by some party to some other
party,
> under agreed terms and for a given time", then some of the
things
> we call loans are not really this but are a commitment to make
> this sort of thing available in the future under certain
> conditions - a thing actually called a Credit Facility. So for
> example construction loans, student loans and many mortgage
> agreements are really this kind of thing and not the kind of
> thing formally axiomatized as a "Loan". By presenting
this in a
> formal, structured, graphical way, yes it takes a while to get
> every SME to fully grasp the simplicity of the underlying set
> theory and the fact that this does not represent some inscrutable
> technical design - but to the extent that they do understand this
> and contribute, we end up with a representation of the domain
> knowledge that could not have been achieved by some
"hero" techie
> type doing all the work. So for instance today we deleted some
> terms that we have been given by some data modelers, because we
> were able to identify formal meaningful terms that already
> existed in the model which matched the intended meanings of those
> data elements.
>
> The secret is to know just enough to present something that's
> nearly right, and then come to the table with humility and
> well-directed questions for the SMEs. And of course having a
> model format which does not require them to learn some language.
>
> Mike
>
>
> On 10/03/2011 17:21, Rich Cooper wrote:
>> I have yet to see a domain expert working with a knowledge
engineer who
>> produces quality results. The few good examples I have
seen are where
>> the
>> knowledge engineer IS a domain expert.
>>
>> Remember that in every domain, there is no Ulysses.
Every expert has an
>> experience that is unique, personal, and not very communicable
in
>> language.
>> The domain expert doesn't have the "aha" reaction of
suddenly seeing a
>> simplification that the knowledge expert does.
>>
>> So I disagree with this long held, but factually incorrect,
assumption.
>>
>> JMHO,
>> -Rich
>>
>> Sincerely,
>> Rich Cooper
>> EnglishLogicKernel.com
>> Rich AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com
>> 9 4 9 \ 5 2 5 - 5 7 1 2
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> [mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
Ed Barkmeyer
>> Sent: Thursday, March 10, 2011 8:58 AM
>> To: [ontolog-forum]
>> Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Using controlled natural
languages for
>> ontology
>>
>>
>>
>> Simon Spero wrote:
>>> On Sun, Mar 6, 2011 at 11:01 PM, John F.
Sowa<sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx
>>> <mailto:sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
>>>
>>> On 3/6/2011 10:39 PM, Zhuk,
Yefim wrote:
>>> > I'd think of CNL
as an intermediate step towards ontology...
>>>
>>> It's more like an alternate
notation for logic that makes comments
>>> readable by both the humans
and the computer.
>>>
>>> A controlled natural
language has a formally defined mapping to
>>> and from some version of
logic. Its main advantage is that
>>> it can be read as if it were
ordinary language.
>>>
>>>
>>> There may be some small differences in ease of
reading between CNL
>>> and regular NL, but these do not appear to be
important.
>>>
>>> Tobias Kuhn (until recently a student of Norbert
Fuchs) has some
>>> interesting results on the understandability of controlled
natural
>>> language in his dissertation (see Chapter 5 in Kuhn (2010)
for info).
>>> Also, as part of his work on ACEWiki Tobias
built a native java
>>> implementation of ACE, making it easier to use without
having to
>>> install prolog).
>>>
>>> Simon
>>>
>>> * Tobias Kuhn. /Controlled
English for Knowledge Representation/.
>>> Doctoral thesis,
Faculty of Economics, Business Administration
>>> and Information
Technology of the University
of Zurich, 2010.
>>> [PDF
>>>
>>
<http://attempto.ifi.uzh.ch/site/pubs/papers/doctoral_thesis_kuhn.pdf>|BibTe
>> X
>> <http://attempto.ifi.uzh.ch/site/pubs/papers/bibtex/doctoral_thesis_kuhn.bib
>>> ]
>>>
>> In our experience the problem isn't intelligibility, unless
the
>> expressions become extraordinarily convoluted. The
problem is that the
>> average domain expert naturally _writes_ a different language
and takes
>> some training to learn to write the controlled language.
Further, I
>> would add, the domain expert is usually reluctant to 'waste
his/her
>> time' doing so. So the practice is still knowledge
engineer working
>> with domain expert to create the ontology. The primary
advantage of
>> using the CNL as a means of _expression_ for _most of_ the
ontology is
>> that it allows the domain expert to read, understand and
validate that
>> part. I say 'most of', because there are usually
technical
>> considerations in the formulation of the ontology that the
domain expert
>> should not be expected to understand -- that is the domain of
the
>> knowledge engineer.
>>
>> [Experts tend to be annoyed when the CNL interpreter complains
about
>> what they wrote, especially since its diagnostics only usually
identify
>> the syntactic point(s) at which it became confused, and its
guidance for
>> what might have been meant is not often helpful. The
worst cases,
>> however, are those in which what the expert writes is
unambiguously
>> parsed by the CNL intepreter, but the interpretation it makes
is not at
>> all what was intended. My favorite recent example was:
>> The surface must be contained between two
planes that are 0.25mm
>> apart.
>> The CNL interpreter understood the constraint to refer to two
distinct
>> instances of a class of object described as 'plane that
is-apart by
>> 0.25mm'! We needed to have the ontology in place to
determine that that
>> interpretation was not comprehensible (there is no such binary
>> relation). And OBTW, the correct _expression_ of that rule
in the CNL was
>> 'extraordinarily convoluted'.]
>>
>> -Ed
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> 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
>
>
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