[Data-modeling] Modeling uncertainty

[Scott Blomquist]

I meant "Is there any reason why we should not make the range of
undertainty..."

On Mon, Feb 16, 2009 at 4:15 PM, Scott Blomquist <scott at blomqui.st> wrote:

> Very interesting suggestion. Is there any reason we should make the range
> of uncertainty able to be +x/-y instead of +/-x? I.e. I can imagine a case
> where someone's date of birth is known to be around a certain time, but it
> could have been as much as 3 years earlier, but no more than 6 months later.
> I realize that serves to make things more complex, but I think it's a more
> accurate reflection of many kinds of date uncertainty. I think you're right
> about using a number and unit of time, though. If we accept dates, I fear
> that some data might get mistakenly entered thinking that this replaces the
> estimated start or end dates in the Event type itself.
>
>
> On Mon, Feb 16, 2009 at 3:24 PM, Kirrily Robert <kirrily at metaweb.com>wrote:
>
>> I wonder whether, for events at least, we could have a co-type for
>> uncertainly dated events that specify a range of uncertainty.  Jeff would
>> kick me for this (if he weren't off having a baby) but call it something
>> like "Uncertainly timed event" and have two properties, "Degree of
>> uncertainty of start date", and "Degree of uncertainty of end date".  These
>> expect a CVT which is an integer and a unit of time, eg. 3 days, 6 months,
>> 1000 years.  For "Spring 1985" assuming it were the northern hemisphere, you
>> could just put in a date of 1 May 1985 and allow 6 weeks' uncertainty, or
>> thereabouts.
>> This would leave you able to put an estimated date in the ordinary date
>> fields on event, allowing it to appear neatly in timelines and whatnot, but
>> also provide the information about the degree of uncertainty.
>>
>> K.
>>
>> On 16/02/2009, at 3:09 PM, Scott Blomquist wrote:
>>
>> I just encountered a scenario today that would benefit from the same
>> solution as your date example. I found some events whose times I've only
>> been able to pin down so far to "Spring 1985", and I don't think I have any
>> good way to represent that in an event today.
>>
>> On Mon, Feb 16, 2009 at 10:28 AM, Tom Morris <tfmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Is anyone doing work on modeling uncertainty?  I'm specifically
>>> interested in dates and locations.
>>>
>>> Location - If I'm told that something is "near" or "in the vicinity
>>> of" a location, currently my choices are to either not record the fact
>>> or to guess at a way to reduce the precision in a way that's still
>>> accurate.  I could say that something which is "near Boston" is "in
>>> Massachusetts," but a) that might not be true and b) that's not the
>>> information that I have.
>>>
>>> Dates - The simple case is "circa," but it would also be useful to
>>> deal with both open and closed ranges (e.g. before 1945, after 1999,
>>> or September 2008-December 2008).  Currently the only type of range
>>> that can be encoded is ones which can be made by truncating precision
>>> (ie 2009 == 1 Jan 2009 - 31 Dec 2009).
>>>
>>> Tom
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>> Data-modeling at freebase.com
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>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> http://scott.blomqui.st
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>>
>>  --
>> Kirrily Robert
>> Freebase Community Director
>> kirrily at metaweb.com
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>>
>
>
> --
> http://scott.blomqui.st
>



-- 
http://scott.blomqui.st
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