ConferenceCall 2009 06 19

= Ontolog Panel Discussion: Towards A Quantities and Units of Measure Ontology-based Standard - Fri 19-Jun-2009  =


 * Session Chair: Dr. FrankOlken (NSF) -- [ opening slides ]


 * Panelists:
 * Dr. StanHuff -- "Experience and Requirements for Units of Measure in Patient Data Exchange" - [ slides ]
 * Mr. DavidPrice -- "OASIS PLCS Committee Requirements for a Units Ontology" - [ slides ]
 * Mr. DaveMcComb -- "The gist Unit of Measure Ontology" - [ slides ]
 * Dr. RobertDragoset -- "Units Markup Language" [ slides ]
 * Dr. RobRaskin -- "SWEET 2.0 Scientific Units Ontology" - [ slides ]
 * Dr. PatCassidy -- "Aligning NASA SWEET sciUnits Ontology with COSMO" - [ slides ]
 * Mr. HowardMason -- "Units of Measure - How many standards?" [ slides ]
 * Dr. PatHayes -- "Making Distinctions" - [ slides ]


 * Panelists in absentia:
 * LinZhang - "Some Internationalization Considerations" - [ input ]
 * GeoffreyWilliams - "The International System of Units Standardization Landscape" - [ input ]

Archives

 * Abstract
 * Our panel's prepared slides can be accessed by clicking on each of the title links below:
 * Slides: . [ 0-chair ] . [ 1-Huff ] . [ 2-Price ] . [ 3-McComb ] . [ 4-Raskin ] . [ 5-Cassidy ] . [ 6-Mason ] . [ 7-Dragoset ] . [ 8-Hayes ]
 * [ Audio Recording of the session ] (mp3)
 * [ Transcript of the online chat session ] during the panel discussion
 * additional [ Resources ] and follow-up

Conference Call Details

 * Date: Friday, June 19, 2009 
 * Start Time: 12:00pm EDT / 9:00am PDT / 6:00pm CEST / 5:00pm BST / 16:00 UTC
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 * This session, like all other Ontolog events, is open to the public. Information relating to this session is shared on this wiki page: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2009_06_19


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 * Acknowledgement: we would like to thank DavidPrice for prompting us to have this session; and to EdBarkmeyer, FrankOlken, HowardMason, PeterYim & SteveRay for putting in the time to get the event organized.

Resources

 * UoM Working Group (developing):
 * Mailing List:
 * message archive is at: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/uom-ontology-std/
 * to join the list, send a blank email from your subscribing address to  (replace " [at] " with "@")
 * Wiki workspace: UoM_Ontology_Standard & UoM
 * shared file repository: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/work/UoM/
 * OntologySummit2009
 * OntologySummit2009_Communique
 * FrankOlken's talk during the OntologySummit2009_Symposium on "Quantities and Units of Measure" as a candidate ontology-based standard we can work on
 * Ongoing discussion:
 * thread starting from: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontology-summit/2009-05/msg00000.html
 * continuing from: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontology-summit/2009-05/msg00038.html
 * and: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontology-summit/2009-05/msg00062.html
 * thread starting from: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontology-summit/2009-06/msg00005.html
 * upload your UoM ontologies to the OOR-sandbox at: http://oor-01.cim3.net

Attendees

 * Registered Attendees:
 * FrankOlken (chair)
 * HowardMason
 * PatHayes
 * RobRaskin
 * DaveMcComb
 * PatCassidy
 * DavidPrice
 * StanHuff (Intermountain Healthcare)
 * YanHeras (Intermountain Healthcare)
 * MarkLin (Intermountain Healthcare)
 * BobDragoset
 * SteveRay
 * EdBarkmeyer
 * PeterYim
 * ForestLin (in absentia)
 * GeoffWilliams (in absentia)
 * FrankChum
 * DavidLeal
 * MikeBennett
 * RaviSharma
 * KurtConrad
 * LaurentLiscia
 * DeborahMacPherson
 * DougHolmes
 * James Davenport (OpenMath Society and University of Bath)
 * DoraiThodla
 * Douglas Mann (Information International Associates)
 * LinePouchard
 * Ed Kenschaft (Institute for Defense Analyses)
 * Joe Collins (US Naval Research Laboratory)
 * BillAndersen
 * AliHashemi
 * Kevin Hannon (Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu)
 * GeraldRadack
 * BillMcCarthy
 * Melanie Courtot (BC Cancer Research Centre, Vancouver)
 * SusanTurnbull
 * ChipMasters
 * Mark Linehan (OMG)
 * Roger Burkhart (OMG)
 * EvanWallace
 * JoshLieberman
 * Terry Longstreth
 * Mitch Kokar (Vistology)
 * Martin S Weber (NIST)
 * Douglas Mann (Information International Associates)
 * ... if you are coming to the session, please add your name above (plus your affiliation, if you aren't already a member of the community) above; or e-mail  so that we can reserve enough resources to support everyone's participation. ...
 * ... if you are coming to the session, please add your name above (plus your affiliation, if you aren't already a member of the community) above; or e-mail  so that we can reserve enough resources to support everyone's participation. ...


 * Regrets:
 * PeterBrown - on board a web-disabled transportation device (airplane)
 * MatthewWest (will be at the yacht race)

Abstract and Thoughts on this Session:
Topic: Towards A Quantities and Units of Measure Ontology-based Standard

by: SteveRay, PeterYim, HowardMason, FrankOlken & EdBarkmeyer

During the OntologySummit2009_Symposium, the "Quantities and Units of Measure" was identified as a candidate ontology-based standard that folks from the standards community and the ontology community can (and should) work together on. Further momentum has been developing through the active discussion among the community members on this matter in the [ontology-summit] mailing list, prompting us to put this session together. It is important that we get a critical mass of representatives at the call, from each of the following constituencies:

1. The acknowledged authorities who maintain governance over the system of measures. Primarily that would seem to be BIPM, along with various national NMIs (National Measurement Institutes) who collectively maintain key documents such as the GUM (Guidelinefor Evaluating and Expressing the Uncertainty of NIST Measurement Results), the VIM (International Vocabulary of Basic and General Terms in Metrology), UCUM (Unified Code for Units of Measure), and the like. Other related organizations would be IEC, IFCC, ISO, IUPAC, IUPAP and OIML

2. The community who believes there is a requirement to have a harmonized ontology for units and measures.

3. The individuals and teams who believe they have an ontology, or a piece of an ontology, that formally describes some or all of such a universe of discourse.

4. The community of ontologists who have the necessary skills to be able to create a rigorous, well-posed ontology, or to evaluate the quality of existing ontologies or structures

With the above in mind, we hope participants in this session will contribute to working up a plan and a course of action that can make our "Quantities and Units of Measure Ontology-based Standard" a reality.

Here are some of the perspectives from our panelists:


 * "Experience and Requirements for Units of Measure in Patient Data Exchange" - by StanHuff - [ slides ]
 * Abstract: Rigorously defined units of measure are essential for the interoperable exchange of patient data. Members of the Health Level Seven (HL7) standards organization has been working in this area for several years. We will briefly review the relevant history and current requirements for units of measure in patient data sharing.

at data exchange between systems that define and manage complex engineering assets such as Ships and Aircraft. In support of that exchange, an OASIS committee standardizes "reference data", represented using OWL, that adds detailed semantics to a generic data model to formally specify information exchange requirements. The PLCS committee has an immediate need for a core Units Ontology with wide industrial acceptance supporting physical quantities, but that is extensible to support additions by using organizations in other areas. PLCS Version 1 has passed its first OASIS ballot and preparation for its publication is underway.
 * "OASIS PLCS Committee Requirements for a Units Ontology" - by DavidPrice - [ slides ]
 * Abstract: The OASIS Product Life Cycle Support (PLCS) standard is aimed


 * "The gist Unit of Measure Ontology" - by DaveMcComb - [ slides ]  .  [ doc ]
 * Abstract: gist is a minimalist upper ontology, expressed in OWL, designed primarily for business use. I will be describing, in this brief, the subset of properties, classes and instances within "gist" that pertains to units of measure.


 * "SWEET 2.0 Scientific Units Ontology" - by RobRaskin - [ slides ]
 * Abstract: SWEET is a middle-level ontology set serving the multiple disciplines of Earth system science and its accompanying data. SWEET includes an ontology for scientific units that is suitable for most physical science applications. This ontology includes complex unit expressions defined by combining base unit concepts via terms from the mathematics ontology.


 * "Aligning NASA SWEET sciUnits Ontology with COSMO" - by PatCassidy - [ slides ]
 * Abstract: The COSMO ontology (COmmon Semantic MOdel) is a foundation ontology ("upper ontology") being developed to serve as an open-source ontology that has a full set of logical representations (types, relations, functions, instances) of the primitive (basic) concepts with which the meanings of all other, more complex terms and concepts in domain ontologies can be specified, as combinations of the basic ontology elements. The most important function of the COSMO is to enable translation of assertions of fundamentally different ontologies into the terminology and format of each other, thereby supporting general, automatic and accurate semantic interoperability. Units of measure are one component of the COSMO ontology.  My presentation will be focusing on one issue in aligning the representations of the NASA sciUnits.owl ontology and COSMO.


 * "Units of Measure - How many standards?" - by HowardMason - [ slides ]
 * Abstract: What are standards? ... and why do we end up with more than one standard?


 * "Units Markup Language" - by RobertDragoset - [ slides ]
 * Abstract: Through participation in an OASIS Technical Committee (TC), Units Markup Language (UnitsML) is being developed for encoding scientific units of measure in XML. This language is expected to be one part of a project  that is composed of three components: an XML schema (UnitsML), a database (UnitsDB) containing detailed  information on SI (International System of Units) and non-SI scientific units of measure, and tools to  facilitate the incorporation of UnitsML into other markup languages. The development and deployment of a markup  language for units will allow for the unambiguous storage, exchange, and processing of numeric data, thus  facilitating the collaboration and sharing of information over the Internet. It is anticipated that UnitsML will be used by the developers of other markup languages to address the needs of specific communities (e.g.  mathematics, chemistry, materials science, etc.). Use of UnitsML in other markup languages will reduce duplication of effort and improve compatibility among specifications that represent numerical data that include  scientific units and measured quantities.


 * "Making Distinctions" - by PatHayes - [ slides ]
 * Abstract: A quick review of some important distinctions that the units ontology will need to keep track of, and a short but passionate exegesis of why this tiresome level of detail is worth paying attention to.

Agenda
1. Opening by session Chair (FrankOlken)

2. Briefings from Panelists -- StanHuff, DavidPrice, DaveMcComb, BobDragoset, RobRaskin, PatCassidy, HowardMason, PatHayes

3. Q & A and Open Discussion (All) -- please refer to process above

4. Summary and Next Steps (FrankOlken)

Proceedings
Please refer to the archives above

Input from Panelists in absentia - we received input from a couple of folks who weren't able to join us on the panel today:


 * From LinZhang (China), sharing with us issues, concerns and insight, especially from the internationalization perspective:

From: ForestLin / Tue, 16 Jun 2009 23:27:14 +0800 // ...I'd still like to share the following with you all.

==Concerns==:

1. Within the international context, we might need a multi-language mechanism for the widely re-use of the UoM ontology. Link: UCUM - http://unitsofmeasure.org/ Link: MultiLingual  UCUM - http://unitsofmeasure.org/wiki/MultiLingual

2. In a country, for different regions, especially different jurisdictional areas, there may be different Systems of Units, although usually there is only one legal system. For example, in China, for the Mainland, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, each has its own legal system. Within the Mainland, the legal sytem is mainly identical to the SI. On the other hand, There are different systems for different application domains, such as Avoirdupois, Troy, Apothecaries and the like. Link: Chinese units of measurement Link: Systems of measurement - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_of_measurement

3. In addition, LOINC mapping tool (RELMA) is also involving a number of units of measurement currently used by medical laboratories, especially in complex units, such as mmol/L. Link: Logical Observation Identifiers Names and Codes (LOINC®)  LOINC - [loinc.org]

==Related works==:

1. Chinese translations of LOINC database and its user manuals. Link: International  LOINC - http://loinc.org/international

2. Chinese translations of the Unified Code for Units of Measure (UCUM) Specification document and its XML data. Link: UCUM Link: MultiLingual  UCUM - http://unitsofmeasure.org/wiki/MultiLingual Link: Chinese translation - http://unitsofmeasure.org/ticket/20

3. Development of the interoperability specification on laboratory reports and preparation of its Proof-of-Concept (POC) testing (For China).

4. Chinese translation of the IHE Laboratory framework - static document (CDA).

Thank you so much for your invitation!

Best wishes, ..Lin Zhang //


 * From GeoffreyWilliams (BSI Group, UK) gave us an overview on the International System of Units Standardization Landscape:

// From: Geoff Williams Sent: 18 June 2009 13:25 To: Mason, Howard (UK); peter.yim Cc: j.larmouth; pellaux-at-iso.org; Anders J Thor; Paul Gerome; Ian Mills Subject: RE: [ontology-summit] Ontolog Session: Towards a Quantities and Unitsof Measure Ontology-based Standard - Thu 19-Jun-2009 Importance: High

Howard

I am afraid that I cannot participate in the teleconference. I draw the attention of the Ontolog Session to the following information (apologies for those who are already conversant with this information.)

The International System of Units, the SI is defined by the BIPM and is the responsibility of the CCU (http://www.bipm.org/en/committees/cc/ccu). Prof Ian Mills is the current President of the CCU.

The SI Brochure (http://www.bipm.org/en/si/si_brochure/general.html) defines the seven base units that provide the reference used to define all the measurement units of the International System. The SI Brochure also defines numerous derived units.

The multipart ISO/IEC 80000 replaces the former multipart ISO 31 and some parts of IEC 60027. ISO/IEC 80000 defines the quantities used in various scientific and technological fields in terms of the relevant SI units and identifies the appropriate SI symbol. ISO/IEC 80000 is the joint responsibility of ISO/TC 12 and IEC/TC 25.

The UK has requested that ISO/IEC 80000 also identifies the appropriate Unicode value for each of the symbols identified in each part of the standard.

Participants in the ONTOLOG session may like to consider the following information. ISO 704 defines the Principles and Methods to be used for the definition of technical terms. The standard requires definitions to be placed in a conceptual framework. ISO 3543-1 and ISO 3543-2 are terminology standards for use in the field of statistics and conceptual analysis was employed during the development of the terms defined. The concept diagrams are given in annexes of both parts of ISO 3543. Would this approach be beneficial to the information science communities and fulfil the need for the different ontologies?

Regards Geoffrey Williams Programme Manager, Business Process Improvement Standards Standards Operations //

IM Chat Transcript captured during the session: (lightly edited for clairty

VNC2: Welcome to the Ontolog Panel Discussion: Towards A Quantities and Units of Measure Ontology-based Standard - Fri 19-Jun-2009


 * Session Chair: Dr. FrankOlken (NSF)

o Dr. StanHuff (Univ. of Utah) -- "Experience and Requirements for Units of Measure in Patient Data Exchange" o Mr. DavidPrice (Eurostep) -- "OASIS PLCS Committee Requirements for a Units Ontology" o Mr. DaveMcComb (Semantic Arts) -- "The gist Unit of Measure Ontology" o Dr. RobertDragoset (NIST) -- "Units Markup Language" o Dr. RobRaskin (NASA/JPL) -- "SWEET 2.0 Scientific Units Ontology" o Dr. PatCassidy (MICRA) -- "Aligning NASA SWEET sciUnits Ontology with COSMO" o Mr. HowardMason (ISO, BEA) -- "Units of Measure - How many standards?" o Dr. PatHayes (IHMC) -- "Making Distinctions"
 * Panelists:

VNC2: Please point your browser to the session page at: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2009_06_19

anonymous1 morphed into DaveMcComb

anonymous1 morphed into DavidPrice

FrankOlken: I am on the chat room now, will join the teleconference momentarily.

DavidPrice: On call and chat

DaveMcComb: I'm on the call (I think)

anonymous1 morphed into Joe Collins

anonymous2 morphed into Mark Linehan

anonymous1 morphed into KurtConrad

anonymous morphed into StanHuff, Yim, Mark

Stan Huff, Yim, Mark morphed into StanHuff, Yan, Mark

Chip Masters: ChipMasters My email is cmasters[at]topquadrant.com.

James Davenport (OpenMath): James Davenport (OpenMath) here

Mark Linehan: This is Mark Linehan from IBM (mlinehan@us.ibm.com). I'm leading a team at OMG that is attempting to come up with a model for Date and Time. It turned out that we needed a model for quantities and units of measure before doing date and time. So we have something to contribute for quantities & units of measure.

anonymous1 morphed into Mitch Kokar

FrankOlken: This is Frank Olken at the National Science Foundation. I will be chairing the teleconference once we are set up.

FrankOlken: I suggest that everyone on the teleconference introduce themselves on the chat room discussion.

anonymous1 morphed into SusanTurnbull

Roger Burkhart: I'm involved in OMG SysML (UML for Systems Engineering) including a model for quantities and units

FrankOlken: EvanWallace you are entirely silent .....???

anonymous1 morphed into Douglas Mann

FrankOlken: We have two anonymous participants in the chat room. Please go to settings and change your login to your actual name.

Laurent morphed into LaurentLiscia

anonymous morphed into EvanWallace

EvanWallace: Thanks Mitch

FrankOlken: Note that due to the number of speakers for this teleconference we will ask each speaker to limit their remarks to 10 minutes.

LaurentLiscia: On behalf of OASIS: DavidPrice and DaveMcComb: thanks for being on the call!

JoelBender: Joel here, and in spite of being late, I'm glad I havn't missed it!

FrankOlken: The first speaker will be StanHuff of Intermountain Health Care from Salt Lake City in Utah.

FrankOlken: The second speaker is DavidPrice from OASIS Product Lifecycle Committee.

FrankOlken: Dave McComb is the 3rd speaker of the teleconference, will speak on the gist units of measure ontology.

SteveRay: Typhoid Mary must have been at the Semantic Technologies Conference. I picked up a bad cold there also!

SteveRay: In DaveMcComb's work, there seems to be a blending of units and dimensions. Seems to me these are distinct concepts.

FrankOlken: Dave, You need to wrap up your talk now.

PeterYim: I doubt if Dave will be reading the chat screen while talking ...

DaveMcComb: Sorry, you're right I have a tough time reading and speaking at the same time

FrankOlken: Is BobDragoset on the call now?

FrankOlken: We are passing over BobDragoset, who is apparently not on the call.

FrankOlken: Our speaker is now RobRaskin, speaking about the NASA SWEET units ontology.

RaviSharma: Welcome Dr. RobRaskin, Ravi here - great presentation. Thanks.

FrankOlken: DaveMcComb,

DaveMcComb: I did have a dimension class in the ontology a couple of years ago, but I found there wasn't much of a need for it.

FrankOlken: @DaveMcComb, Please post the URL of the gist units ontology to the chat room discussion.

DaveMcComb: The gist unit of emeasure ontologogy is at http://ontologies.semanticarts.com/gist/gistUOM.owl

DaveMcComb: There is some documentation on gist at http://www.gist-ont.com

FrankChum: Minimalist!!!

DaveMcComb: As I look at it and think about it, I guess the dimensions just sort of folded into the subtypes of UnitsOfMeasure (I didn't really intend that but it sort of worked out that way)_

RaviSharma: Some confusion between Power as raised to Power in Math vs Power and energy flow measure. Can you kindly provide some other example as well next time? just a suggestion. but some notes may clarify. Glad to learn that JPL and ESIP are collaborating on these.

FrankOlken: PatCassidy is now speaking on the alignment of the NASA SWEET Units ontology to COSMO ....

SteveRay: @DaveMcComb: The reason that looks problematic to me is that there can be several different units to measure a given dimension.

MikeBennett: @SteveRay - I think the concept of dimension is critical, and then common concepts like amount and quantity, before we even get down into specific domains. As Dave says, currency exchange rate has a time dimension.

DaveMcComb: @SteveRay Yeah, but if they each have the same base (so if fortnights and hours each have "second" as their base unit, they will be inferred to be "duration" units) which I think gets the dimension idea, without having to have another class or property

anonymous morphed into BobDragoset

FrankOlken: @BobDragoset, We will have you speak after PatCassidy, who is speaking now.

FrankOlken: Pat, We have a problem in that the base unit for mass in SI is the kilogram.

RaviSharma: PatCassidy - If we could agree to represent the Units (generally) in form of tuples then perhaps time and calendar typpe conversions and ontological meanings would be clearer?

JoelBender: An extension/implementation of the unix 'units' command to support this effort would be excellent.

FrankOlken: HowardMason, from ISO will now speak.

Joe Collins1: Actually, all units have time dependence, not just currencies WRT rates of exchange. It's just that rates of exchange change on a much shorter time-scale.

anonymous morphed into BobDragoset

Joe Collins1: ISO documents are not cheap. I suspect this is why people generally refer to abstracts of them.

RaviSharma: HowardMason - often units are used across-communities, standards are followed cross communities. Ontology would allow reasoning to compare different ways of expressing physical entity such as energy and also different automation mechanisms based on language type etc. hence there is a cse for XML or ontological representation of units.

FrankOlken: BobDragoset is now speaking on the UnitsML Units Markup Language.

FrankChum: @HowardMason: Scope specific standards can prevent ontology from being unneccessarily bloated.

HowardMason: I am merely keen to ensure that we avoid duplication and conflict

FrankChum: @HowardMason, I concur!

FrankOlken: What sort of units need non-integer exponents of the "root" units?

RaviSharma: Frank - any measures of geometry such as PI!

JoelBender: ah, that's how I get my warp factor, v = w^3 * c

FrankOlken: @BobDragoset, You need to start wrapping up.

anonymous morphed into Martin S Weber (NIST)

MikeBennett: It seems to me there is a real art to not designing something. That's the difficult part of ontology.

Joe Collins1: Rational powers of units & dimensions may be encountered in manipulating model equations. I would not want to put a finite bound on what is expressible.

FrankChum: @BobDragoset, seems to me that the UnitML you presented is for the scope of physical science.

Martin S Weber (NIST): @JoelBender (timestamps) : speaking about UnitsML: there will be something like the unix units command, and UnitsML does include capabilities for timestamps so this should well be possible.

FrankOlken: PatHayes is now speaking on "Making Distinctions".

Joe Collins1: Q@RobRaskin: What will be maintained by the ESIP Federation, just units and dimensions, or all of SWEET?

Joe Collins1: Q@ BobDragoset: What tool did you use to represent your schema diagrams?

Martin S Weber (NIST): @FrankChum: The initial scope was/is 'encoding scientific units of measure'. I myself will (ab)use it for CS "units" too. I don't see much in the schema limiting UnitsML from being used to model other units

Martin S Weber (NIST): @Joe Collins1: this was done with XMLSpy* (yeah you asked Bob, I'm on the group, too, though.) [ *Certain commercial software was identified as being used by the UnitsML Group at the National Institute Of Technology. Such identification is not intended to imply recommendation or endorsement by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, nor is it intended to imply that the software identified is necessarily the best available for the purpose. ]

FrankOlken: From BobDragoset's slides: For the most recent UnitsML schema and documentation with images, go to: http://unitsml.nist.gov

FrankOlken: From BobDragoset's slides: For information about SI units and non-SI units for the U.S., go to: http://physics.nist.gov/sp811

RaviSharma: Pat- Money is a measure but its units are measured by currency type, but gold is ounces or gms?

Joe Collins1: Gold - troy ounces!!

MikeBennett: @Ravi: the world moved from measuring money in weights of metals, to recognising the property ofr money as an information construct. If it has a dimension of a basic "stuff" it's information.

Joe Collins1: Yes, Money is a social construct and not measurable in the same way as physical quantities.

anonymous morphed into LinePouchard

Martin S Weber (NIST): @Ravi We were jokingly talking about money last UnitsML TC Meeting. You -could- model that as dimension & quantity (counted item) money.. and model 1 unit per currency involved. UnitsML wasn't designed for that, you -could- model it ..

Martin S Weber (NIST): several problems with the extreme time-dependance with "unit" conversions arise though

DavidLeal: A distinction that nobody has yet made is between unit and scale (oops Pat just has). Decibel is a scale, but not a unit. A very important scale is ITS90 - the practical temperature scale, which is an appoximation to the linear scale derived from the unit Kelvin.

MikeBennett: @Martin - then you would (jokingly) fall in to the trap of "designing" some solution to the problem. We have seen a lot of clever stuff in ontology, when what we should be doing is teasing out the simplcity of reality itself.

James Davenport (OpenMath): @Martin S Weber (NIST): time AND space - consider pount/guinea arbitrage in 17th century England

Joe Collins1: Units and Quantities ARE a physical theory, mathematically constructed. Math constructs are inseparable from meaningful discussion.

Martin S Weber (NIST): @JD: true. (We talked about using external WSDL described services to do these conversions. You could model time in unitsml. not space (directly) though)

MikeBennett: @PatHayes - some real clarity there.

PatHayes: @MikeBennett: reality isnt simple, and it doesn't have units

RaviSharma: Thanks Martin and Mike. units are required for common understanding such as measuring a given string or reproducing it by production, etc. and so is wealth or money by measuring the amount required for exchange conversion or barter.

Douglas Mann: ISO 31 has quantity, dimension, and unit. (see: ISO 31-0 "section 2.2.6 Dimension of a quantity")

Douglas Mann: ISO 31-0 says velocity is a Quantity and L/T is the Dimension of velocity.

Douglas Mann: Are people aware of this website? http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/ ... Just a few units.

anonymous morphed into RobRaskin

EvanWallace: VIM

James Davenport (OpenMath): Not sure if I was heard, but fuel efficiency can be in miles/gallon or litres/100km.

Martin S Weber (NIST): @just speaking: dimension analysis is dangerous here: Think energy / torque. You really have to talk about quantities, not dimensions when trying to compare unit'ized values

MikeBennett: @PatHayes - good point. I guess Einstein's dictum applies. I just get worried when I see some clever "solution" to the "Problem". That's what the next level of system design is about whereas the ontology should be accurately depicting the problem. You said it cleare than I could tho.

James Davenport (OpenMath): And the two CAN be directly compared, even though they are reciprocal.

Mark Linehan: The VIM standard that I mentioned is called "International vocabulary of metrology Basic and general concepts and associated terms (VIM)"

JoshLieberman: Many indirect but few direct references to the fact that units / dimensions / quantities are only meaningful together within a coordinate reference system. How and should this work into a units ontology?

JoelBender: We don't need MathML?

EvanWallace: Josh: either we have to adopt one reference quantity (dimension) system or we need to

Mark Linehan: it is standard number JCGM 200:2008 issued by BIPM - the Bureau International des Poids et Measure -- the people who put out SI

EvanWallace: allow (as VIM does) the definition and reference of different quantity systems.

Martin S Weber (NIST): Joel: at some point math comes in and when it comes to marking this up, will you invent something new or use something existing like OM or MathML?

Joe Collins1: The distinction between energy and torque can be made using the SI concept of Kind of Quantity.

JoshLieberman: This is unavoidable for spatial units, but I wonder to what extent it is behind other multiple unit conventions in other domains.

RaviSharma: Speakers: Object of measure is either a physical object or geotemporal - geometric object. However processes can alkso be measured thru these. any thoughts?

Martin S Weber (NIST): @Joe Collins1: that was what I was pointing at. Unit & dimension is not enough alone.

PatHayes: Do dimensions have 'reasonable' ranges of scale? Eg mm and parsecs are both lengths, but maybe should be treated as different dimensions (?)

MikeBennett: I think the fundamental ontological problem is "Amount" v "Quantity", extended out into what they are a numeric number or a measured amount of, and in the case of some continuous quantity, what unit that is measured in. Each thing so measured is measured along some dimension.

JoshLieberman: @PatHayes - coordinate reference systems have different scales, which might indicate why mm and parsec are not convertible in most practices.

Joe Collins1: The amount of a quantity is definable using the SI concepts unit(Q) and num(Q).

Martin S Weber (NIST): @MikeBennett to me you have a reading, a measurement of something. All possible readings make up the quantity. You reason about this reading with reference to a "1" thing, which is the unit. And the dimension is there to describe the class of all possible readings. Doesn't that describe amount vs. quantity?

James Davenport (OpenMath): @PatHayes: that's a consequence, not a property. months are days are botrh time, bt aren't interconvertible

EvanWallace: As mentioned depending on units alone is ambiguous since derived units can represent different quantities.

PatHayes: @James Davenport: months are a notorious special case, because they aren't even units. BUt my point would be, should we treat say milliseconds and millennia as belonging in different dimensions?

DaveMcComb: to PatHayes: I agree, but from a pragmatic point, if I have a dimension and unit, to communicate I need to get people to agree on two things (ie the concept of length and an agreement on "meter") where if I derive length from convertTo meter, once they've agreed on "meter" I've got both.

MikeBennett: @Douglas Mann: dimensionality versus Dimension. Dimension is a feature of reality so if we ignore it we will be stuck forever in some technical design "workaound" that is not an ontology at all.

MikeBennett: sorry I have to jump off at 11 so I won't have time to get to the top of the list.

James Davenport (OpenMath): @PatHayes I disagree that months aren't units, but they are certainly notorious. For your second, no: they ARE the same dimension, since there's a contunuous spectrum between them.

Martin S Weber (NIST): @PatHayes: milliseconds and millenia, there's just a tiny constant between them (well or function depending on which calender you choose to use). So I'd throw them in the same pot...

RaviSharma: Speakers: can NOTHING have quantity or dimension? Obviously it is something physical or concept of reality in space-time --- that only requires measurability and therefore units - the subject of today's ontology dialog!

PatHayes: @DaveMcComb: True. You have efficiency on your side, I have robustness. I guess my point could be phrased: robustness is more important than efficiency when we are waning to keep a wide scope.

PatHayes: waning/wanting

DaveMcComb: I also find that people find it easier to agree to concrete things than abstract things. so getting them to agree to a couple of scratches on a piece of platinum (a meter) is actually easier than getting them to agree on something more abstract, derived from that (length)

Joe Collins1: The vacuum (nothing?) has physical properties.

MikeBennett: We should end up with the same view of dimensions and units and things as we learnt about in school. Length is a dimension. Time is orthoginal to length and so is another dimension. As it charge and mass.

Mark Linehan: PatHayes: In our OMG date-time effort, we ended up distinguishing "precise units" (e.g. second) from "nominal units" (e.g. months). Common language has both but they have different properties for reasoning purposes.

JoshLieberman: Re: millisecond and millenium - there may be a nominal conversion, but over any real length of time, the number of seconds in a year will vary, so a particular millenium will have different numbers - coordinate reference system!

PatHayes: @Joe Collins1: If it has properties, the it's not nothing (spoken as a logician).

Martin S Weber (NIST): @Joe Collins: The vacuum is a certain reading of amount of o2 (and pressure?), isn't it? So it's not nothing

JoshLieberman: Is a unit ontology of "inherent properties" or "observed phenomena"?

DaveMcComb: Who was just speaking? That was good

Joe Collins1: @ Martin S Weber (NIST) - Not just that. there are quantum fluctuations regardless of gas pressure.

James Davenport (OpenMath): @Mark, so both a year and a month are nominal, but nevertheless a year is precisely 12 months (PS: did we meet at YKT?)

EvanWallace: +1 to speaker comment

ChipMasters: ChipMasters (Me)

Mark Linehan: @James -- yes, and yes.

Martin S Weber (NIST): @Joe C: what I meant to say, if you can 'measure' it being there, it's not nothing ... you can't measure nothing But then again, 0 has properties..

DaveMcComb: Chip, your points, I think was that the dimension is baked into the system (not independent)? Interesting

SusanTurnbull: Perhaps use the term dimensions (plural) vs. dimentionality (as in higher orders of dimension - i.e. high energy physics, string theory, n-dimentionality, etc.)

RaviSharma: Speakers: it is one object but does not get described in all aspercts by dimensions that imply origin and geometric concepts - but there are properties that do not belong to common dimension such as spin and quantum levels etc?

Joe Collins1: The effects of quantum fluctuations in a vacuum are measurable. Whether you want to refer to the vacuum as "nothing" is a matter of definitions.

RaviSharma: Susan - yes similar to what i wanted to express.

DaveMcComb: On Frank's point of scope: should we have a scientific scope and a general use scope (I'd suggest the general including the scientific so it's not inconsistent when they use the same units)

RaviSharma: zero has no properties really it is approximating the object with zero that has property.

RaviSharma: Speakers: Electron - what are its units/ dimension (geo) or energy or charge, etc. therefore every object can have different units for different purposes?

Martin S Weber (NIST): @Ravi: is the neutral element to e.g. integer addition, that by which you cannot divide, to you zero (which thus would have properties), or the object trying to represent itself?

RaviSharma: Martin - not clear on Neutral element but zero and infinity are more powerful concepts than any enumerables - this is the basis of indian philosphy - at least one of them!

PatHayes: I am wondering what kind of dimension mg-per-gram can be? Does that make sense in CGI?

EvanWallace: NIST is not an SDO.

RaviSharma: Pat - measure in a mixture such as alloy, imprity, etc for example, very useful.

SteveRay: NIST would still need to identify an SDO to work with.

PeterYim: @PatHayes - another example of imprecise units is, maybe, "lunch time" (this was an example brought up when we were trying to convince the EHR people that they need to seriously consider ontologies back in 2004)

Martin S Weber (NIST): @PeterYim: It's not imprecise, it's just not constant. and I wouldn't call it a unit but a measurement to which you can relate.

PeterYim: @Martin S Weber (NIST): indeed ... thanks

PatHayes: @ravi: I understand, but if you do dimensional analysis, its mass/mass= dimensionless. Which of course it is, since it "measures" a ratio. IMO this is one illustration of why different communities will need different ontologies. Some thing is useful for one community but incoherent to another.

DavidPrice: So W3C, OMG or OASIS are the options for open stds.

JoshLieberman: concentration is a quantity / measurand / phenomenon which, having dimensions of gg-1, is dimensionless

PatHayes: I doubt very much if the W3C would consider this within its purview. Just a personal opinion.

Martin S Weber (NIST): @ Josh, Pat : to be pedantic: It is dimensionless but it's measuring the ratio of two different quantities

RaviSharma: Pat your example of mg per gm is pertinent. I agree with you that we will have different ontologies but also a need to converge or interoperate so as to not have knowledge sioes?

RaviSharma: siloes?

DavidLeal: I support the use of MathML too. We don't want to reinvent things, and MathML has useful capabilities like lambda calculus.

SteveRay: I concur with HowardMason's strategy.

PatHayes: MathML is too general, and does not support the needed ontological expressiveness.

RaviSharma: Pat - dimensionless analysis is usual in high energy and gravitational work and is a way to normalize or scale.

Martin S Weber (NIST): @PatHayes don't use it to express everything, use it to express the parts of math you need and embed it. Better than trying to come up with something to describe formulae if you need to imho

PeterYim: @HowardMason - the recommendation you made (verbally) just now is important ... would you document it here on the chat, please (so it can go into the proceedings, besides just being captured on the recording) ... thanks

JoshLieberman: That does bring up the question of what are the initial applications and therefore requirements (logical, expressive, computable) of this ontology? Are "weird" units indeed an initial target, or a later problem for example?

James Davenport (OpenMath): @PatHayes: I disagree, but we should have this discussion offline. J.H.Davenport@bath.ac.uk

PatHayes: @Ravi: engineering and bioinformatics can likely be in different siloes for the forseeable future without harm. Trying to find one standard/ontology to cover both is likely to be too large a stretch, IMO. Put StanHuff and BobDragoset in a room and wait for the color of the smoke to change?

PatHayes: @James: OK, lets. Note I wasnt suggesting ignoring MathML altogether.

Pat Cassidy: On the issue of ratios of quantities of substances as a 'unit', it may be necessary to have a complex 'unit' (or attribute value) consisting of the ratio of two substances. That 'unit' would have pointers to each substance, and the attribute value would include the numerical ratio.

Joe Collins1: I think that the definitions of the units and definitions within MathML must follow from their definition by a metrological standards body.

PatHayes: @Joe Collins1: metrological?

RaviSharma: Pat - you have a point but MEMS - nano mechanical delivery of medicines is a real case for understanding both together?

James Davenport (OpenMath): @PatHayes, JC: what I said was that the MATHEMATICS should be in MathML, e.g. NIST's x:=a+b*(y+d)/c

Joe Collins1: Metrology, the science of measurement.

PatHayes: @Ravi: good point. I hadnt thought of that particular nexus.

EvanWallace: Please add me to the list Peter.

Martin S Weber (NIST): @James Davenport: I agree and MathML and/or OpenMath will be supported in a near-future version (not the dreaded "1.0") for that reason

BobDragoset: @JamesD: there is a strong possibility that UnitsML will adopt MathML to represent mathematical expressions.

DavidPrice: Can NIST organize, facilitate the work with the aim of eventually standardizing in BIPM?

PatHayes: @Stan O, speaking: There seemed also to be some consensus on the need for extendability.

DaveMcComb: Agree completely with PatHayes's last statement

Joe Collins1: BobDragoset, I'd like to forward my paper "OpenMath Content Dictionaries for SI Quantities and Units".

DaveMcComb: We do agree on a lot, and should start there

EvanWallace: Good idea Frank.

PeterYim: as discussed: (1) I will be creating a new mailing list to cover this "Towards A Quantities and Units of Measure Ontology-based Standard" discussion, (2) I will automatically subscribe everyone who is here today to that list (if you want to opt out, please email me peter.yim@cim3.com), (3) I will announce the creation of this mailing list both on [ontolog-forum] and on the session page we are using today, i.e. http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2009_06_19

BobDragoset: @DavidPrice: I think that's a possibility, but I'm not an ontology expert.

Mark Linehan: Pat, there may be a core set of concepts that can have relatively broad concensus, and then extension sets for specific disciplines

PatHayes: Can anyone gather together all the readings people think we should all have read?

PatHayes: We can't say goodbye as we are all muted.

DaveMcComb: bye

DavidPrice: BobP / BobD!

FrankOlken: We will continue the discussion on an email list that Peter Yim will construct and put a link to on the

EvanWallace: Bye.

DougHolmes: Adios

FrankOlken: conference call wiki page at Ontolog Forum

FrankOlken: Signing off

PeterYim: also, there are people who I don't know (and don't have a email address for) ... therefore if you attended this session, but did not pre-register by email, please drop me a note to  to make sure I have your email addresses and your affiliations

PeterYim: great session ... thanks you everyone!

-- session ended: 2009.06.19-12.33pm PDT --


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