Use Case 6

Use Case 6: Display Connections To Parent Or Child Concepts (Statically)

Actors

Primary Actor: most likely an individual researcher, ecologist or (more commonly) taxonomist, or an entity intending to view concepts, connections (synonymy, parent/child relations), and statuses according to one or more sources of information that the SEEK Taxon database makes available.

Often it is useful - again, for understanding the meaning of taxomomic perspectives and changes among them through time - to view the connections of a selected child concept (say, a species-level concept) to one or more respective parent concepts (e.g. the various genus-level concepts in which the species concept has been placed by different authors). Conversely, it is possible (at least in the taxonomic database world) to create a new parent concept on the basis of uniquely connecting various existing child concepts to it. These connections imply a certain "nestedness" (perhaps in the cladistic sense of an abstract, hypothetical ancestor), and are different from synonymy connections made among concepts assigned to the same level.

Flow of Events

Pre-conditions

The Primary Actor has already queried the SEEK Taxon database with a name and obtained a listing of matching concept short-hands - e.g. Carya ovata (Miller) K. Koch sec. Stone, FNA 1997 - one of which is selected for complete concept entry viewing.

Basic Flow

Having viewed the complete entry of a concept, the Primary Actor now selects an option "display connections to parent concepts".
He or she can specify whether the returned listing should be restricted to "expert-made" connections among concepts, or also include probabilistically calculated ones.
A listing is returned to the user, often containing multiple entries of the sort "(returned) concept 2 is a parent of (queried) concept 1, according to author I and reference A". That is, the user views a listing of connected parent concepts, not just parent names. The connections themselves have referenced authors, just as is the case for concept synonymies.
In the case of SEEK calculated connections, each entry of connected parent concepts will come with a probability value.
Based on the results, the user may choose to view the complete entry (not just the short-hand) of a connected parent concept.

Examples

A taxonomist wants to view the parent concepts connected to previously selected concept "Carya ovata (Miller) K. Koch sec. Stone, FNA 1997". One of the returned entries lists: "Carya Nuttall sec. Stone, FNA 1997 is a parent of Carya ovata (Miller) K. Koch sec. Stone, FNA 1997, according to Stone, FNA 1997". This example seems a little awkward, since "Stone, FNA 1997" has authored not only the child and parent concepts, but also the parent/child connection among them. However, it may well occur that an author acknowledges a species concept of another author without changes, and places it in a third author's genus concept, thus only being the author of the connection.
Alternatively, the query returns the entry: "Carya Nutall sec. USDA Plant List Version 2003 is a parent of Carya ovata (Miller) K. Koch sec. Stone, FNA 1997, according to the SEEK parent/child relationship algorithm, with a probability of 95%". Viewing the latter concept entry may assist in understanding the similarities on which this value is based.

Post-conditions

Again, the concept "short-hands" displayed in the listing of concept synonymies should ideally indicate how much information is attached to the complete concept entries, e.g. whether they include specimen listings, or have been connected by "experts" to multiple alternative classifications.

Alternative Flows

The examples can be altered to return the child concepts (e.g. varieties) placed in Carya ovata (Miller) K. Koch sec. Stone, FNA 1997, according to various authors, e.g. "child concept 1: Carya ovata var. fraxinifolia Sargent sec. Sargent, Manual Trees NA 1933, according to Stone, FNA 1997".

Further Details

See other Use Cases involving or expanding on queries.

Non-functional Requirements

An intelligent, interactively usable algorithm to achieve name-to-concept matching; and presumably a minimum set of expert-made connections. Also, a practical understanding when reconnections among parent and child concepts, or additions of child concepts to and subtractions from parent concepts, necessarily result in new parent concepts.

Issues

A document on "stopping rules" for creating parent concepts on the basis of reconnected, newly added or subtracted child concepts (with real examples), is in preparation.

History

25 March 2004: (NMF) Use Case created (somehow) from previous Word document.

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This page last changed on 30-Jun-2004 13:05:49 PDT by LTER.stekell.