Working with a data set and have run across a different question than vagueness/possibility of relationships. (see Topic Map Modeling of Sequestration Data (Help Pls!) if you want to help with that one.)
What if when analyzing the data I determine there is no association between two subjects?
I am assuming that if there is no association, there are no roles at play.
How do I record the absence of the association?
I don’t want to trust the next user will “notice” the absence of the association.
A couple of use cases come to mind:
I suspect there is an association but have no proof. The cheating husband/wife scenario. (I suppose there I would know the “roles.”)
What about corporations or large organizations? Allegations are made but no connection to identifiable actors.
Corporations act only through agents. A charge that names the responsible agents is different from a general allegation.
How do I distinguish those? Or make it clear no agent has been named?
Wouldn’t that be interesting?
We read now: XYZ corporation plead guilty to government contract fraud.
We could read: A, B, and C, XYZ corporation and L, M, N, government contract officers managed the XYZ government contract. XYZ plead guilty to contract fraud and was fined $.
Could keep better score on private and public employees that keep turning up in contract fraud cases.
One test for transparency is accountability.
No accountability, no transparency.
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