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Re: [ontology-summit] dimensions/aspects of ontology types?

To: "AJ Chen" <ajchen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "Ontology Summit 2007 Forum" <ontology-summit@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: "Obrst, Leo J." <lobrst@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2007 10:11:13 -0500
Message-id: <9F771CF826DE9A42B548A08D90EDEA800190BD59@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
AJ, I think you are definitely on the right track. However, I am not familiar with these ontologies to any depth. Dublin Core, I know, but will not comment yet.
 
I think our effort here will try to flesh out (1) and perhaps will help develop (2). Concerning (3), I think that is partially under the rubric of ontology evaluation and certification, but think our effort here will assist that too.
 
Thanks,
Leo
 
_____________________________________________
Dr. Leo Obrst       The MITRE Corporation, Information Semantics
lobrst@xxxxxxxxx    Center for Innovative Computing & Informatics
Voice: 703-983-6770 7515 Colshire Drive, M/S H305
Fax: 703-983-1379   McLean, VA 22102-7508, USA
 
 


From: AJ Chen [mailto:ajchen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Monday, January 29, 2007 2:28 PM
To: Ontology Summit 2007 Forum; Obrst, Leo J.
Subject: Re: [ontology-summit] dimensions/aspects of ontology types?

Leo, thanks for putting a list of dimensions together. As I suggested earlier, it would be helpful to the discussion if we could drill down these dimensions with examples of existing ontologies or ontologies just made up for the discussion.

Working from application development angle, I look at relevant ontologies mainly in two dimensions: (1) the application areas or domains an ontology is design for; and (2) the level of granularity an ontology has. The main purpose of surveying existing ontologies in such a way is for re-using of the existing ontological classes and properties and for increasing the chance for interoperability. And so, my hope here is that we can brainstorm on any possible way that will make the task of comparing ontologies and their classes and properties easier for application developers. More importantly, a clear framework for ontology comparison will potentially help people produce new ontologies that are easier to be reused and integrated.

The examples I'm looking at are dublin core, FOAF, vCard, FuGO, EXPO. The questions are:

(1) how do we categorize them from application and granularity dimensions?

(2) can we identify/develop a common framework that improve our understanding of these different ontologies and thus increase reuse and integration?

(2) what suggestions can we make to the owners of the ontologies that will increase the re-usability and interoperability of their new versions of ontologies?

Any new thoughts or comments?

AJ

Quoting "Obrst, Leo J." <lobrst@xxxxxxxxx>:

> Folks,
>
> To begin to address the "typing" of ontology that the Ontology Summit
> prospectively would like to address, I'm beginning this new thread. I'd
> suggest using the subject line to clearly distinguish any NEW topic, so
> that skimmers/samplers/surfers can focus more meaningfully. Why?
> Because we really don't yet have metadata-annotated or "semantically"
> threaded email -- except for subject lines. For example, currently we
> have the topic "ontology as logical theory?".
>
> I'm bringing forward my suggestion (message dated Thursday, January 25,
> 2007 2:14 PM, under the Subject = Re: [ontology-summit] Defining
> "ontology"), simply as a strawman, slightly enhanced with a canonical
> dimension/feature name (e.g., Formality) and a scale of values (e.g.,
> Informal=0, Formal=1). I don't know if this will prove useful, but let
> us know your thoughts. Note that these are not pejorative: the feature
> name and the values are relatively arbitrarily chosen (though I have my
> own biases).
>
> Please comment on/modify/trash these. Note if you strongly believe in
> one definition or think this effort is not worthwhile or the dimensions
> are mischaracterized, please let us all know.
>
>
> Dimensions of Ontology Types:
>
> 1) Formality: Informal (Formality = 0)  vs. Formal (Formality = 1)
> 2) Expressivity: Expressivity of the semantic model (i.e., underlying
> knowledge
> representation language or logic) [No scale determined yet]
> 3) Concept-based: Term (Concept-based = 0) vs. concept (real world
> referent)(Concept-based = 1)
> 4) Mathematical Ordering: Mathematical ordering, structure, definition
> of the privileged
> parent-child relation: [No scale determined yet]
> 5) Application focus/use cases, etc. (part of this is precision of the
> service needed, e.g., metadata/topic terms for a document to aid in
> broad doc topic retrieval vs. a semantic service query, specfication,
> or composition): [No scale determined  yet]
> 6) Granularity (precision, scope): [No scale determined yet]
> 7) Development Philosophy: Empirical (bottom-up) [0] vs. Rationalist
> (top-down) development [1]
> methodology (i.e., arbitrary folks add or annotate terms/concepts vs. a
> rigorous ontology development) [No scale determined yet; Some
> combination? Middle-out? But what does that mean?]
> 8) Human-Coded: Human-coded [1] vs. machine-learned/generated [0]
> 9) Automated reasoning (and complexity of that, i.e., one could have
> transitive closure or subsumption down a subclass graph vs.
> theorem-proving): [No scale determined yet]
> 10) Descriptive vs. prescriptive (i.e., a commonsense or
> conceptually-profligate ontology vs. an ontology that specifies that
> this is the way the world is): [No scale determined yet]
> ...
>
> Other criteria perhaps address properties of the content, i.e., Average
> density/bushiness: [Probably a real scale, once we define density,
> bushiness], etc.
>
>
> Some notes:
> 1. Expressivity, Mathematical Ordering, and Automated Reasoning are
> probably related.
> 2. Application focus/use cases: this is still nearly arbitrary, but I
> would like us to think about recall/precision of the application/use
> case as perhaps a better scale or paired scales, i.e., [Recall = 0,
> Precision = 0] vs. [Recall = 1, Precision = 1], but then we need to
> define Recall and Precision. Or there may be some normalized score that
> factors both Recall and Precision into a composite real number. Then
> again, a better dimension may be application complexity if that can be
> agreed on, i.e., Constant, Linear, Logorithmic, Exponential, ...
> NP-Complete, ... Of course, if we go with this latter notion, then it
> is probably closely related to (1) above, i.e., if a problem is
> characterizable as NP-Complete, then there is probably a corresponding
> expressivity model requirement. This gets into expressive complexity,
> i.e., the correlation between the expressiveness of the language and
> complexity of the computation.
>
> Thanks,
> Leo
> _____________________________________________
> Dr. Leo Obrst       The MITRE Corporation, Information Semantics
> lobrst@xxxxxxxxx    Center for Innovative Computing & Informatics
> Voice: 703-983-6770 7515 Colshire Drive, M/S H305
> Fax: 703-983-1379   McLean, VA 22102-7508, USA
>
>
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--
AJ Chen, PhD
http://www.web2express.org
"Open Data on Semantic Web"


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