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Re: [ontolog-forum] What is Data? What is a Datum? 2013-01-09-0930

To: ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
From: Kingsley Idehen <kidehen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2013 10:35:56 -0500
Message-id: <50F0315C.1010900@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
On 1/10/13 3:44 PM, Ed Barkmeyer wrote:
> On 1/10/2013 2:51 PM, Kingsley Idehen wrote:
>> On 1/10/13 2:32 PM, Ed Barkmeyer wrote:
>>> On 1/9/2013 8:36 AM, John F Sowa wrote:
>>>>> Sjir,
>>>>>
>>>>>>> I would just have said that a datum is a proposition that is taken to
>>>>>>> be, or asserted to be, true.  The context for that role is any context
>>>>>>> in which the proposition is taken to be true.
>>>>> I agree.
>>>>>
>>>>> I would also add that not all data is propositional.  For example,
>>>>> the list of names and numbers in a telephone book consists of paired
>>>>> instances of two kinds of data.  Each pair becomes a proposition
>>>>> when the instances are inserted in an appropriate schema:
>>>>>
>>>>>        "The person named _________ has the telephone number ________."
>>> I disagree.  That is, the meaning of each pair in the telephone
>>> directory is a proposition of that form, and the pair is a datum. It is
>>> not necessary to express the sentence per se.
>>>
>>> Is John saying that the name of the person is not by itself a
>>> proposition?  I would argue that, if one considers the name of the
>>> person alone to be a datum, then it expresses a different proposition,
>>> to wit:  There exists a person whose name is X. Further, the presence of
>>> the name in the telephone book implies the proposition:  There exists a
>>> telephone number N such that the person named X has telephone number N.
>>> Both of these follow from the proposition that is the meaning of the
>>> pair (datum).
>>>
>>> The distinction I am making is in what the datum is.  I argue that a
>>> datum is a proposition.  A value without any interpretation is not a
>>> datum.  It is a child without a meaning.
>>>
>> Thus, in Turtle notation [1] for RDF model based data representation
>> syntax, the following is an example of a Datum (a single proposition),
>> right?
>>
>> <#PersonX> <#hasPhoneNumber> <tel:+999-999-9999> .
>>
>> While this is Data i.e., more than one proposition, as in:
>>
>> <#PersonX> <#hasPhoneNumber> <tel:+999-999-9999> ;
>>                        <#knows> <#PersonY> .
> IMO, yes.
>
> -Ed
>
>    (01)

So building on the above, a Sentence is a Datum.  Likewise, a Paragraph 
is Data.
The paragraph above expressed in Turtle notation as:    (02)

<#Sentence> <#sameAs> <#Datum> .
<#Paragraph> <#sameAs> <#Data> .    (03)

Or with more specificity:    (04)

<#Proposition> <#kindOf> <#Sentence> .
<#Statement> <#kindOf> <#Sentence> .
<#Proposition> <#sameAs> <#Statement> .
<#Proposition> <#sameAs> <#Datum> .
<#Statement> <#sameAs> <#Datum> .
<#Paragraph> <#sameAs> <#Data> .    (05)

--     (06)

Regards,    (07)

Kingsley Idehen 
Founder & CEO
OpenLink Software
Company Web: http://www.openlinksw.com
Personal Weblog: http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/~kidehen
Twitter/Identi.ca handle: @kidehen
Google+ Profile: https://plus.google.com/112399767740508618350/about
LinkedIn Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/kidehen    (08)

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