Spatial Ed's types

Length statistic: Summary statistics and user defined units of measurement

2007-12-12T21:50:20.0007Z

One more note about included types vs. inheritance is that the included type can be removed from a topic, which is not possible with inheritance. For example, the "film actor" type includes the type "person", but not all actors are people. So when I added the type "film actor" to the dog Pal, I was able to delete the type "person" which was added to the topic because of inclusion.

Length statistic: Summary statistics and user defined units of measurement

2007-12-12T20:51:52.0007Z

Thanks Faye, you are probably right about limiting the measurement units to a few options through an enumerated type. Also thanks about the info on the limitation CVTs as included types and inheritance vs. included types. It is very helpful. My understanding now is that included types can be considered a form of inheritance only during data entry but not for data organization. However, inheritance for data entry modeling is a very powerful feature and I'm glad I finally wrapped my head around it because it will save me a lot of time and improve the logical structure of my data models.

Length statistic: Summary statistics and user defined units of measurement

2007-12-12T20:28:20.0007Z

Ed, with the <a href="http://www.freebase.com/view/guid/9202a8c04000641f8000000006ad2925">Acadian Flycatcher nest - first brood</a> topic I finally get what you were trying to put together. I'm no bird-watcher and am not familiar with expert data in this field, but it's impressive, and the schema makes sense.

I'll take a look at your post for "an option for including summary statistics published in the literature". If your concern is for citation and sourcing, to my knowledge there isn't a type to support that already (closest I can think of is Quotation...but not quite). Instead of using an enumeration, a brute-force and simple way of handling multiple statistics is to create one property per possible statistics. Of course the result is a lot of properties, but it makes it easier to query data down the road and might make it more obvious to users what they can enter. The enumeration type can obscure that, and until users click on it they have no idea just what statistics they can enter. Something to think about. The current schema works fine though.

In terms of offering users the ability to choose preferred units, I still think the fewer the better -- perhaps one in metric (cm?) and one in the old English system (in?)?

To clarify, user-created types can be included types. You can include any non-CVT type you created and any published, non-CVT type created by another user. The limitation is on CVT's, which currently cannot be included types. You cannot see unpublished types by other users.

Included type is not inheritance -- it's a handy shortcut for "including" the properties of another type in your type so that when somone adds a new topic to your type, the properties of the included types show up as well. Note that if you add an included type after some instances have been created for your type, the include type is not going to be added to existing instances "retroactively" -- unlike inheritance. There's also no way to override a "parent" property because it is never a parent-child relationship to begin with. Also unlike with true inheritance, you are allowed to create in your type properties with the same names and types as those in the "included" type -- there's no conflict because it's not inheritance. That said, you're not the first to point out the similarities between included type and inheritance. So if it helps to think of it that way, as long as you're aware of the differences, there's no harm.

Length statistic: Summary statistics and user defined units of measurement

2007-12-12T07:36:20.0012Z

Alright, I think I'm starting to get a handle on how data is organized here. This type addresses two questions I've posed before and I'd like to get some feedback from other data modelers and developers.

1. I needed an option for including summary statistics published in the literature. For example, there does not seem to be a way to handle the entry of the mean and standard deviation of a published widget description. No one responded to my question about it so I created a 'summary statistic' enumerated type that lists various statistics.

2. I needed an option for users to select the measurement unit of the published widget summary statistic from a list so that they don't screw up the converion of that number if forced to convert it to some standard unit (e.g., centimeters). I therefore made a compound variable type that included the summary statistic type, a floating point number type and a floating point unit type.

This length statistic type allows users to enter one or more summary statistics describing the length of the widget. See the example of how I'm using this type in my nest type. It may be easier to see the relationships using the type viewer (type = nest (spatialed's types). Similar types can be created for other measurement units describing area, temperature, etc. Maybe there is a way to increase the generality of this type for those units but I haven't figured that out yet.

I would have prefered to build this length statistic type by inheriting the properties of my floating point statistic type. However, it does not appear that user's types can be listed as included types - at least it did not show up in my type search for the included type within the couple hours around the time I developed this type. It would be nice if it was possible to add existing user's types as included types quickly.

Another point: the help topic on included types states "This is not true 'inheritance' - it is a looser association than that." However, for this use it IS inheritance. The help topic led me astray that this is how included types CAN work. Other users may be better informed if there was some mention in the included type help topic about the positive aspects of hierarchy and inheritance.

Please let me know if I'm wrong about any of this or if there is an existing better way.

Webpage: Web Page as a type?

2007-12-08T05:26:51.0000Z

I would like to have the ability to attribute the source of any information that I attribute to a topic, even if it came from a webpage.

Webpage: Web Page as a type?

2007-12-08T02:18:01.0000Z

Ed, the Webpage type is what we call a “compound value type” (CVT), which can not be easily assigned to existing topics. What type are you attaching the citations to? It might be possible to just make a property have Webpage as its expected type, but I would need to know more about how you are using the citations to give you more advice.

Webpage: Web Page as a type?

2007-12-07T05:25:45.0000Z

I found the type Webpage: http://www.freebase.com/view/common/webpage but had to get to it through links. It does not come up through the search or through the 'add type'. It does not appear possible to assign this type to a topic at this time.

Webpage: Web Page as a type?

2007-12-07T05:06:44.0012Z

I would like to add 'Web Page' as a type of citation. I see that 'webpage' is a property and collections of "web pages" served through a single domain constitute a "Web Site". However, there is neither a 'Webpage' nor 'Web Page' in the list of types. Shouldn't there be one?