Hi Dennis, thanks for your quick response!
Working together with Thomas, in fact one option that came to our mind was to attach "certainty nodes" to the entities where we need them (Component.E18 and Phase Type Assignment.E17 in our case) to technically implement uncertainty in Arches. We are struggling, however, to find an entity type in CIDOC CRM that seems adequate for modelling certainties. The only type that seems a possibility to us here is E59 Primitive Value / E62 String. So, conceptually we ask ourselves if there is a more adequate CIDOC type (which is designed for modelling certainties). And philosophically we are not sure if it doesn't contradict the idea of a E18 Physical Thing (Component.E18) to possess an attribute that expresses (un-)certainty of existence. We appreciate any comments or hints on these thoughts! Best, Tobias On Thursday, March 27, 2014 10:36:05 PM UTC+1, Dennis Wuthrich wrote: > > Thomas, > > Good question! You are quite correct that we haven’t tried to include > uncertainty in Arches. > > One reason is pretty basic: certainty is quite subjective from person to > person. For example: most people agree that the earth is spherical. But > a “flat-earther” may be very certain that the earth is not a sphere, but > is instead a plane. His certainty does not make him correct, it merely > states the degree to which he believes in his interpretation. Clearly, you > can be very certain and very wrong at the same time. I guess my point is > that in many cases “certainty” says more about the person making the > assertion than it does about the thing being described. > > OK, all philosophy aside, one could easily extend any Arches graph to > include a “certainty node”. Such a node could point to a thesaurus (as > many of the nodes in Arches already do), allowing a user to select from a > list of “uncertainty levels”. Really, any Arches graph could include > a “certainty node” under any entity that you might want to qualify (for > example, one certainty node for period and another certainty node for > heritage type). > > Really, the hard part is not in getting Arches to allow you to add > an “uncertainty level” to your cultural heritage data. Rather, the > difficult thing is to decide how you’ll get different people to agree on > what constitutes certain vs. uncertain interpretations of heritage. > > Sorry that I can’t be any more helpful… However, I’m very interested > to hear how you will model uncertainty and how you will get people to > implement it consistently. Please keep me posted! > > Cheers, > > Dennis > > > On Mar 27, 2014, at 2:41, thomas....@gmail.com <javascript:> wrote: > > I have a question about conceptual modeling in CIDOC CRM, maybe there is > someone one the list who is able to provide some guidance. > > As posted before, we are trying to integrate research data of neolithic > sites into Arches. Now, naturally a significant part of this data has a > level of "certainty" to which the information is correct. e.g. a site can > consist of some features for certain (in this case modeled in the > Archaeological Heritage (Site).E27 - Component.E18 relationship) but if > others exist is uncertain. We believe this valuable information should not > get lost (quite often theory construction is based on such information). > > For example it could be uncertain if an archaeological feature is to be > named "pit" or "ditch" - or if it exists at all. Another example could be > the questionable relationship of a findspot to a certain archaeological > period. To make it even more difficult, different authors could have > different thoughts on that. > > As far as we can see, the expression of such "uncertainty" is not covered > by Arches yet. Is there a concept for the integration of such data in the > future? We are currently thinking into potential solutions but are > struggeling to find adequate expressions for uncertain information in CIDOC. > > thanks, Thomas > > -- > -- To post, send email to arches...@googlegroups.com <javascript:>. To > unsubscribe, send email to archesprojec...@googlegroups.com <javascript:>. > For more information, visit > https://groups.google.com/d/forum/archesproject?hl=en > --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "Arches Project" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to archesprojec...@googlegroups.com <javascript:>. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > > > -- -- To post, send email to archesproject@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe, send email to archesproject+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more information, visit https://groups.google.com/d/forum/archesproject?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Arches Project" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to archesproject+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
