I think if you consider the basic fact as either a mono or binary predicate, and then everything else is derived from those, you can gauge.
The total sum of stored data has been estimated (not quite the same notion):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12419672,
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/11/02/12/1934244/the-sum-total-of-the-worlds-knowledge-250-exabytes. But apparently that was as of 2007 and just published in Science Express in February, 2011.
See
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/332/6025/60.abstract for the original story, once you peel back the blogger crap.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
Thanks,
Leo
From: ontology-summit-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontology-summit-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of matthew lange
Sent: Tuesday, May 22, 2012 6:06 PM
To: lavern@xxxxxxxxxxxx; [ontolog-forum]; [ontolog-summit]
Subject: Re: [ontology-summit] Estimating number of all known facts
Billions is several orders of magnitude too small, to be sure--but then again you were talking about beholders, not the facts themselves...wiuch leads me to think that we perhaps could estimate a ballpark average number of facts that a beholder needs to know
for various levels of sophistication in particular knowledge domains--including "common sense".
In addition to ability--Malcolm Gladwell's, 10,000 hours must be roughly translatable in terms of "knowable entities".
Just looking for ballpark here...surely someone has investigated this in terms of knowledge engineering...
On Tue, May 22, 2012 at 2:28 PM, LaVern Pritchard <lavern@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The number of known facts is unknowable because a fact is in the eye of the beholder or a label, there are billions of beholders and labelers, no way to know what they individually know or how they label or to eliminate
duplicates.
There are estimates I've seen from time to time about the amount of "stuff" in electronically stored form. But facts are slippery things.
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On 5/21/2012 2:59 PM, matthew lange wrote:
Hi everyone,
I am trying locate published works related to estimates on how quickly
our web of knowledge is expanding: that is, estimations on the number of
known facts in the universe, how quickly this is growing, knowledge
domains with particular growth rates, etc. I would be delighted if
someone could point me in the right direction, especially toward peer
reviewed resources.
Also, my apologies for cross-posting, I do practice good netiquette, but
I didn't know which list was more appropriate--happy to receive guidance
here as well.
Best,
~mc
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