On 20 December 2012 02:20, jmcclure@hypergrove.com wrote:
For me the question is how to name the precision information. Do not the XSD facets "totalDigits" and "fractionDigits" work well enough? I mean
Yes, that would be one way of modeling it. And I agree with you that, although the xsd attributes originally are devised for datatypes, there is nothing wrong with re-using it for quantities and measurements.
So one way of expressing a measurement with significant digits is: (Proposal 1) * normalizedValue * totalDigits * fractionDigits * originalUnit * normalizedUnit
To recover the original information (e.g. that the original value was in feet with a given number of significant digits) the software must convert normalizedUnit to originalUnit, scale to totalDigits with fractionDigits, calculate the remaining powers of ten, and use some information that must be stored together with each unit whether this then should be expressed using an SI unit prefix (the Exa, Tera, Giga, Mega, kilo, hekto, deka, centi, etc.). Some units use them, others not, and some units use only some. Hektoliter is common, hektometer would be very odd. This is slightly complicated by the fact that for some units prefix usage in lay topics differs from scientific use.
If all numbers were expressed ONLY as total digits with fraction digits and unit-prefix, i.e. no power-of-ten exponential, the above would be sufficiently complete. However, without additional information it does not allow to recover the entry:
100,230 * 10^3 tons (value 1.0023e8, 6 total, 3 fractional digits, original unit tons, normalized unit gram)
I had therefore made (on the wiki) the proposal to express it as:
(Proposal 2) * normalizedValue * significantDigits (= and I am happy with totalDigits instead) * originalUnit * originalUnitPrefix * normalizedUnit
However I see now that the analysis was wrong, indeed it needs fractionDigits in addition to totalDigits, else a similar problem may occur, i.e. the distribution of the total order of magnitude of the number between non-fractional digits, fractional digits, powers of 10 and powers-of-10-expressed through SI units is still not unambigous.
So the minimal representation seems to be:
(Proposal 3) * normalizedValue (xsd:double or xsd:decimal) * totalDigits (xsd:smallint) * fractionDigits (xsd:smallint) * originalUnit (a wikidata item) * originalUnitPrefix (a wikidata item) * normalizedUnit (a wikidata item)
Adding the originalUnitPrefix has the advantage that it gathers knowledge from users and data creators or resources about which unit prefix is appropriate in a given context.
I see the current wikidata plan to solve this problem by heuristics very critical, I do not see the data set that sufficiently tests the heuristics yet. Gathering information from data entered and creating a formatting heuristics modules over the coming years (instead of weeks) will be valuable for reformatting. The Proposal 3 allows to gather this information.
Gregor
Note 1: The question of other means to express accuracy or precision, e.g. by error margins, statistical measures of spread such as variance, confidence intervals, percentiles, min/max etc. is not yet covered.
Given the present discussion, this should probably be separately agreed upon.
Note 2: Wikipedia Infoboxes may desire to override it, this is for data entering, review, curation, and a default display where no other is defined