Another Word For It Patrick Durusau on Topic Maps and Semantic Diversity

November 6, 2013

Taming Galactus [Entity Fluidity, Complex Bibliography, Hyperedges]

Filed under: Biography,Graphs,Neo4j,Time — Patrick Durusau @ 2:57 pm

Taming Galactus by Peter Olson.

From the description:

Marvel Entertainment’s Peter Olson talk about how Marvel uses graph theory and the emerging NoSQL space to understand, model and ultimately represent the uncanny Marvel Universe.

Marvel Comics by any other name. 😉

From the slides:

  • 70+ Years of Stories
  • 30,000+ Comic Issues
  • 5,000+ Creators
  • 8,000+ Named Characters
  • 32 Movies (Marvel Studios and Licensed Movies)
  • 30+ Television Series
  • 100+ Video Games

Peter’s question: “How do you model a world where anything can happen?”

Main problems addressed are:

  • Entity fluidity, that is entities changing over time (sort of like people tracked by the NSA).
  • Complex bibliography, that is publication order isn’t story order. Not to mention that characters “reboot.”

Marvel uses graph databases.

Using hyperedges for modeling.

For example, the relationship between a character and person who plays the character is represented by a hyperedge that includes a node for the moment when that relationship is true.

Very good illustration of why hyperedges are useful.

Makes you wonder.

If a comic book company is using hypergraph techniques with its data, why are governments sharing data with data dumpster methods?

Like the data dumpster where Snowden obtained his supply of documents.

BTW, for experiments with graphs, sans the hyperedges, Marvel is using Neo4j.

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