[Data-modeling] Olympics domain for review

[Kurt Bollacker]

On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 05:41:37PM -0700, Robert Cook wrote:
> I believe we should use abstract types minimally, and instead use  
> domain-specific models.  Ultimately, to support the queries you  
> suggest, we could have meta-structures in the schema that equate  
> properties among different types that are semantically equivalent.
> 
> Abstract types are a kind of contingency bet where you are assuming  
> you will need generality and you are willing to take a near-term hit  
> in complication and user confusion.  I think the near-term cost of  
> that bet is too high in most cases.  If Freebase gains enough  
> information where cross-domain queries start to make sense, then the  
> higher-order semantics can be added without impinging on the freebase  
> users who care about their specific domain.
> 
> Over-abstraction is like premature optimization.  It's nice to think  
> you "got it right" from the beginning, but that almost never happens.

Abstraction is a one way function.  We can always easily build more
general properties out of more specific ones.  It's very hard to make
more specific ones from more general.  From a graphd performance
perspective it's not a disaster in a MQL query to combine all "events"
for each sport into a query to find "all the events Michael Jordan has
won". To pick apart the event types from the more general query is
much more complex to parse in the general case.

								kurt :-)	

 
> R
> 
> On Mar 26, 2008, at 4:33 PM, Bryan Cheung wrote:
> 
> > I think this is a great start.
> >
> > This may be a little off topic, but hopefully a pertinent conversation
> > for data-modeling:
> >
> > I'm interested if we can generalize some of these types to use them
> > across all sports types.  For example, let's say I wanted to know all
> > the events Michael Jordan has won.  He was part of the Mens Basketball
> > Dream Team that won gold in 1992, also part of the Chicago Bulls which
> > won numerous NBA Championships, and who knows how many celebrity golf
> > tournaments, or, hypothetically, a minor league baseball championship.
> >
> > If we had a general Sports Event, with a Sports Event Winner and other
> > types to support the model, then we wouldn't have to query the Olympic
> > Sports types, Basketball types, Golf types and Baseball types to find
> > all the events Michael Jordan (or a team he was on) won.
> >
> > However, it may be rare that we have many crossover athletes like
> > Michael Jordan, Bo Jackson, or perhaps a decathlete that wins sporting
> > events across different domains.  Additionally, the nuances of each
> > sport can make it hard to abstract a specific sporting event into a
> > general one.
> >
> > Do data-modelers see any benefit to normalizing the sports event /
> > championship award?  Or should we contain each different sport within
> > its own domain?
> >
> > Bryan
> >
> >
> > On Mar 26, 2008, at 11:26 AM, Kirrily Robert wrote:
> >
> >> So I have this user domain about the Olympics, at http://www.freebase.com/view/user/skud/olympics
> >> and I'd love some people to take a look at it.
> >>
> >> The main thing that I'm undecided about is that the events contested
> >> in a given Olympic Games and the medals awarded are kind of
> >> redundant/denormalised.  That is, the same information is appearing
> >> twice.  But if you make it so it only appears once, under medals
> >> awarded, it would seem to discourage people from entering in events
> >> for which the medals are not yet awarded or are unknown.
> >>
> >> The other thing I'm considering adding is demonstration events/ 
> >> sports.
> >>
> >> Comments welcome.
> >>
> >> K.
> >>
> >> -- 
> >> Kirrily Robert
> >> Freebase Community Director
> >> kirrily at metaweb.com
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Data-modeling mailing list
> >> Data-modeling at freebase.com
> >> http://lists.freebase.com/mailman/listinfo/data-modeling
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Data-modeling mailing list
> > Data-modeling at freebase.com
> > http://lists.freebase.com/mailman/listinfo/data-modeling
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Data-modeling mailing list
> Data-modeling at freebase.com
> http://lists.freebase.com/mailman/listinfo/data-modeling