Sergei's suggestion is an excellent one. (01)
Perhaps one very useful outcome of the UO summit would be begin an
effort to find funding for such tests. Given that application
development costs are as high as they are, we almost never get the
kind of comparative studies we're talking about – no business has the
resources to do them and purely empirical work such as this is IMHO
somewhat unpopular in the academic world. (02)
I'm thinking something like the HALO project, except extended in the
way Sergei suggests (maybe OMG or some related body would be
interested in backing the "non-ontology" team)... (03)
.bill (04)
On Mar 11, 2006, at 18:14 , Sergei Nirenburg wrote: (05)
>
> On Mar 11, 2006, at 5:58 PM, Bill Andersen wrote:
>
>> C'mon, Leo! You're spoiling my fun! And why do all of this work
>> if it isn't fun? :-D
>>
>> Actually, I am serious about that test I mentioned. If some
>> entity like DARPA or ARDA is looking for something worthwhile to
>> do, I would consider a test such as this worthy of funding.
>
> Well, in order to assure that this test actually works, we need to
> demonstrate
> that a realistic application system that relies on an ontology
> beats a system
> that addresses the same application but does not use an ontology.
>
> And this, in turn, highlights the need of including a means of
> automatically creating
> ontologically supported assertion bases, carry out reasoning using
> them and
> then outputting results in a form that can be readily evaluated in
> comparison
> with non-ontological applications.
>
> This is a lot of work, though I would be very happy to take a part
> in such a test,
> especially if the task involves analyzing and generating text (my
> colleagues and I
> have been building NLP applications based on ontology-supported
> text analysis and generation for many years.)
>
> Sergei
>
>> On Mar 11, 2006, at 17:55 , Obrst, Leo J. wrote:
>>
>>> Bill,
>>>
>>> We are ALL on your side, because we have all gone through this so
>>> many
>>> times. We all firmly believe in the value and ultimate necessity of
>>> Upper Ontologies -- because we have fought our way to this
>>> conclusion
>>> the hard way. We just need to impress this experience on others who
>>> have not yet undergone the baptism by fire. Teach them, not exorcise
>>> them.
>>>
>>> Leo
>>>
>>> ps. So does this mean that relational databases don't already
>>> provide
>>> everything that we need? ;)
>>> _____________________________________________
>>> 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
>>>
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: uos-convene-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>>> [mailto:uos-convene-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Bill
>>> Andersen
>>> Sent: Saturday, March 11, 2006 5:36 PM
>>> To: Upper Ontology Summit convention
>>> Subject: [uos-convene] The value of ULO
>>>
>>> Just a quick comment on Mills' comment:
>>>
>>> Before continuing, let me first say that I am happy that Mills is an
>>> advocate for ontologies in general. Ok... but...
>>>
>>>> Bottom line: I applaud and encourage the efforts of this UO
>>>> community. By coming together, I hope they deliver value. At the
>>>> same
>>>> time, I'm reserving judgement (or, remaining agnostic regarding the
>>>> value, pending evidence), and am harboring a supposition that in
>>>> the
>>>> next year or so, technology may be emerging that will obviate UO
>>>> arguments by subsuming all of these disparate approaches and
>>>> subjecting them to tests of efficacy.
>>>
>>> I am having a very hard time understanding this comment. Short of
>>> HAL-9000, just what technology might that be that will subsume UO or
>>> "obviate UO arguments"?
>>>
>>> One of the things that has been systematically overlooked in these
>>> discussions is that almost all of the ULOs under discussion here are
>>> at least in part philosophically motivated. This includes at least
>>> SUMO, Cyc, DOLCE, and Matt West's 4D ontology and to a lesser extent
>>> PSL. They are so because the philosophers have been at this
>>> business
>>> for 2500 years, long before the advent of the W3C. The tools of
>>> mathematical logic and later computational logic were what were
>>> needed to make this 2500 years of work effective.
>>>
>>> As for efficacy, I have been arguing the need for this since my
>>> first
>>> posts to this mailing list. One comment that I have made more
>>> than a
>>> couple times in different guises is that the value of ULO lies NOT
>>> ONLY in semantic interoperability but has engineering advantages as
>>> well for building individual ontologies. Our experience at OW has
>>> been that we build better ontologies much faster (and thus at less
>>> cost) than those who take a tabula rasa approach, no matter what
>>> formalism they work in. That we have done this, you'll just have to
>>> take my word as the work was either classified or FOUO.
>>>
>>> The good news is you don't have to take my word for it. I
>>> suggest we
>>> set up an experiment by which teams of comparable expertise in their
>>> chosen formalisms, given the same domain description and a fixed
>>> amount of time, one using a ULO and one prohibited from doing so,
>>> build a domain ontology to meet the description. Then, given the
>>> same data sets, both are subject to a bank of blind competence
>>> questions based solely on the domain description by parties
>>> unfamiliar with the logical formalisms employed. We repeat the
>>> experiment several times on different domains. As an added
>>> bonus, we
>>> then take the resulting domain ontologies and, using them as
>>> starting
>>> points, ask each team (ULO, and non-ULO) to *extend* them to a
>>> different, but related domain. Then more competency questions.
>>>
>>> I know on which team I'll place my bet. Any takers?
>>>
>>> .bill
>>>
>>> Bill Andersen (andersen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx)
>>> Chief Scientist
>>> Ontology Works, Inc. (www.ontologyworks.com)
>>> 3600 O'Donnell Street, Suite 600
>>> Baltimore, MD 21224
>>> Office: 410-675-1201
>>> Cell: 443-858-6444
>>>
>>>
>>> _________________________________________________________________
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>>>
>>
>> Bill Andersen (andersen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx)
>> Chief Scientist
>> Ontology Works, Inc. (www.ontologyworks.com)
>> 3600 O'Donnell Street, Suite 600
>> Baltimore, MD 21224
>> Office: 410-675-1201
>> Cell: 443-858-6444
>>
>>
>> _________________________________________________________________
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>> To Post: mailto:uos-convene@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> Community Portal: http://ontolog.cim3.net/
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>> Community Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?
>> UpperOntologySummit
>
> _________________________________________________________________
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> uos-convene/
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> UpperOntologySummit
> (06)
Bill Andersen (andersen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx)
Chief Scientist
Ontology Works, Inc. (www.ontologyworks.com)
3600 O'Donnell Street, Suite 600
Baltimore, MD 21224
Office: 410-675-1201
Cell: 443-858-6444 (07)
_________________________________________________________________
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