Julita
Great insights to your journey, I am also exploring. (01)
Thanks.
Ravi
(Dr. Ravi Sharma)
313 204 1740 Mobile
drravisharma@xxxxxxxxx (02)
-----Original Message-----
From: ontology-summit-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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Sent: Saturday, December 19, 2009 8:20 AM
To: Ontology Summit 2010 discussion
Subject: Re: [ontology-summit] Fwd: Ontologist Aptitude Test? (03)
Hello everyone, (04)
For what it is worth it, here goes my personal experience on how to become
an ontologist. (05)
I could be considered a potential or in-progress ontologist. I am a
Computer Science engineer from Spain who had long working on knowledge
engineering, modelling and so forth. (06)
Some four years ago, for my PhD thesis, I was suggested to build up an
ontology to support the analysis, design and implementation process of a
certain kind of control-based systems. Fine with me, but at the time the
first question was: what is an ontology? (07)
Naively, I looked for some courses, seminars or some kind of training on
the topic. There are not that many, I found just a handful in Spain as
Summer Camps, MSc or PhD seminars which had either taken place time ago or
I could not registered in. No new courses were offered, or I was unable to
find them both in Europe and the US. (08)
Hence, the training to become an ontologist followed the path of finding
books and references from well-known ontologists. I was lucky enough to
find a couple of just published books on ontological engineering and
ontologies for software engineering. (09)
I have to say that learning from scratch about ontologies, ontological
commitments, languages, tools, linguistic and ontological instantiation,
etc has not been easy. (010)
The real struggle started when I had to develop my own ontology. How do
you do that? I do not have a full answer. Already established
methodologies helped me as a guide. The rest, common sense, prior
knowledge engineering and test and error procedures. As a result, an
ontology suitable enough for our needs, which I hope will grow as our
research evolves. And a PhD dissertation on its way, trying to explain the
entire ontological engineering process. (011)
Have I become an ontologist? Hard to say. What is the main feature which
has made me an ontologist (if I am one)? My (humble) knowledge on
ontological engineering or the (possibly incomplete) ontology I have
developed? (012)
Possibly, if I have to go through a multiple choice test now on the topic,
I will fail it. Knowing the theory just helps, does not make you an
ontologist. If I do need a language or a tool, I will learn it on the
spot, when I do really need it. No use to remember OWL, RDF, etc by heart.
The important thing for me was to sit down and train my brain to think
different from what I was used to do. (013)
A last comment. Trying to explain to non-ontologist people what you are
doing, has been difficult. I had to start explaining to my own research
team what an ontology is, what I was doing, and most importantly, how it
will help them as down-to-earth software and hardware engineers. People
are not used to deal with concepts, relations, attributes and axioms. It
is too abstract to grasp. (014)
Regards, (015)
Julita Bermejo-Alonso (016)
>
>> Surely every ontologist should have created an ontology, be able to
explain their modelling choices, compare to what they found out there and
so on as well as to have a vague idea of how it might be used. That could
be a short-thesis.
>
> I agree that every potential ontologist (since we haven't determined if
they really are one yet) should be able to present one or more
ontologies
> and support their design decisions. A very good thesis would also
explain
> the tradeoffs that were made by the decision.
> (017)
>
>> This should allow demonstrating familiarity with relevant tools, but
tools are varied and what matters is the ability to learn them as need
arises.
>
> I'm not convinced that you can test for the ability to learn a tool,
only
> that you have demonstrated proficiency with a specific tool. But that
doesn't mean that being a Certified Cisco Network Engineer is irrelevant
when looking for a supervisor of HP networking equipment, because it
demonstrates that someone has the patience and persistence. I'm
interested in knowing that if somebody says they have the aptitude for
being an ontologist, has anyone put that to a test? What were the
questions?
>
>> I hope, at any rate, there will never be any multiple choice tests in
serious ontology teaching...
>
> I wouldn't go that far, especially during teaching. Multiple choices
tests are perfect when there is a definitive answer. The simplest I can
think of off the cuff, "Does the sample ontology in part A involve open-
or closed-world assumptions?" (and the word "involve" might not be the
right one) (018)
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