Online Mathematics Textbooks is a good stop if you want to take your tool kit to the next level.
Plug-n-play indexing and search engines will do a lot out of the box but aren’t going to distinguish you from the competition.
Understanding the underlying algorithms will help make the data mining you do to populate your topic map qualitatively different.
Here’s your chance to brush up on your math skills without monetary investment.
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PS: At some point, maybe at TMRA, a group of us need to draft an outline for a topic maps curriculum. Would have to include topic maps, obviously, but would also need to include courses in Information Retrieval, User Interfaces, Natural Language Processing, Classification, Math, what else? Would need to have “minors” in some particular subject area.
I think a topic maps curriculum should include a reading of _Gödel, Escher, Bach_. I’m pretty sure having read it* before being exposed to Topic Maps helped me understand what Topic Maps are all about.
* well, I skimmed the parts about Gödel’s theorem.
Comment by Marijane — July 14, 2010 @ 10:50 am
Marijane,
+1!
Any particular parts?
Suggested questions/activities?
Thanks!
Comment by Patrick Durusau — July 14, 2010 @ 11:21 am
It’s been a few years since I read it so I can’t suggest many particular parts off the top of my head. His discussions about self-description and isomorphism are important.
Also, GEB is where I first encountered Indra’s net, which is a Buddhist metaphor for the infinite which I suspect might also be a good metaphor for Topic Maps. Hofstadter uses it “as a metaphor for the complex interconnected networks formed by relationships between objects within a system.” (quoting Wikipedia there, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indra%27s_net#G.C3.B6del.2C_Escher.2C_Bach). Sounds like a topic map to me. =)
In general, I tend to think people should try to slog through the whole thing, but it’s important to understand that I believe you don’t actually have to *read* the whole thing to get Hofstadter’s point. He explains each concept in several ways — a dialogue, a written discussion, and a mathematical discussion — which means you have several opportunities for understanding. Hence my comment above that I skimmed the parts about the theorem — I don’t enjoy reading math, unfortunately. But I think I still got the meat of the book’s meaning. One of these days I’m going to read just the dialogues and see how representative it feels of the book as a whole. =)
I also wanted to add that some exposure to Alfred Korzybski’s Theory of General Semantics might be useful. I haven’t read his book, _Science and Sanity_, but I am familiar with his premise of the map-territory relation and I think it’s also something good to know about when diving into topic maps. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map-territory_relation)
Comment by Marijane White — July 15, 2010 @ 3:31 pm
Thanks!
Appreciate the reminder about Korzybski!
The reason I was asking about specific portions is that there is so much good material related to topic maps that my preference would be broad exposure to as many works as possible.
Perhaps there should be a choice? That is there could be a reading assignment of one or two substantial works, with a report on how they relate to topic maps or shorter readings of portions of works.
To give people with different reading/research skills an option.
Comment by Patrick Durusau — July 15, 2010 @ 3:55 pm
That sounds like a good option.
When I have some time this weekend, I will dive back into GEB and try to identify the parts that are most relevant to Topic Maps.
Comment by Marijane White — July 15, 2010 @ 4:03 pm