Alexios,
To pull the information modeling thread a bit using your example, the names
of the tuple columns are missing. If this were a spreadsheet it would look
like:
Entity Rel Category
------ ----- --------
Person is-a Class
Alice is-a Person
or:
Entity Rel Entity
------ ----- ------
Person is-a Class
Alice is-a Person
The difference is meaningful because "Category", like "Relationship", can
be enumerated in a standard like SPDX:
Relationship = {1: is-a, 2: hasGender, 3: hasHairColor, ...}
Category = {1: Class, 2: Person, 3: Gender, 4: Male, 5:Female, ...}
while Entity cannot. Entity includes categories but also includes people.
The first item in your list could be serialized in JSON as:
{"entity": "Person", "rel": "is-a", "category": "Class"} (Verbose or
Unfriendly JSON)
["Person", "is-a", "Class"] (Compact or
Friendly JSON)
["Person", 1, 1] (Concise or
Machine-optimized JSON)
The information model defines that those three serializations contain the
identical information, and any one can be losslessly converted to the
others. If data is not constrained to a defined list, then 1) it does not
optimize as well and 2) it is more difficult to reason about as knowledge.
For the second column a knowledge engine needs less AI if it is given a
defined list of Relationships than if it has a data lake of unconstrained
strings and has to infer what they mean.
The same applies to the third column if it makes sense within the problem
domain. Information modeling highlights that there are alternatives, it
doesn't advocate a particular answer.
Dave
On Wed, Jun 16, 2021 at 7:42 AM Zavras, Alexios <[email protected]>
wrote:
> [...]
>
> But remember, we are talking about knowledge representation—what we know
> about those people.
>
> The exact same data may be serialized as:
>
>
>
> Person is-a Class
>
> Alice is-a Person
>
> Bob is-a Person
>
> Charlie is-a Person
>
> Gender is-a Class
>
> Male is-a Gender
>
> Female is-a Gender
>
> Alice hasGender Female
>
> Bob hasGender Male
>
> Charlie hasGender Male
>
>
>
> This is simply a collection (list) of facts – and the different entities
> appearing therein create a graph, not a tree. To make it even more visible,
> the last fact may be replaced by an equivalent:
>
> Male isGenderOf Charlie
>
> [...]
>
> ReplyForward
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