Re: Scientific Measurements

On Wed, Jun 5, 2013 at 10:04 AM, Thad Guidry <thadguidry@gmail.com> wrote:

> Alex,
>
> Hmm...It looks like we already have QuantitativeValue but that's about it.
>
> http://schema.org/QuantitativeValue
>
>
I've already looked at this and can say this isn't sufficient to capture
what the IVOA is already doing.  I may be able to use this for the weather
data if I ignored the use of UNECE codes for units.

The UNECE codes are most certainly uncommon and probably inappropriate for
scientific data.  A simple example of this is temperature.  The UNECE codes
are:

   CEL = degree Celsius
   FAH = degree Fahrenheit

There are problems with this in that:

   * Kelvins is missing
   * The codes are not the standard symbols uses in communicating
temperature measurements
   * Fahrenheit is not a SI unit.

Another problem is that there are huge domains base SI units that are
missing (e.g. pressure).

There there is also the metadata approach that the IVOA uses in their
VOTABLE [1] model where columns of data are described by annotations and
the actual values are typically unit-less.  If such a system were to be
translated into schema.org types, it would probably be similar to how
valueReference with a StructureValue works on QuantitativeValue.

I've spent a lot of time digging through how Astronomers exchange data via
IVOA standards and they've got some interesting ideas that seem to work
well for them.

[1] http://www.ivoa.net/documents/VOTable/

-- 
--Alex Milowski
"The excellence of grammar as a guide is proportional to the paucity of the
inflexions, i.e. to the degree of analysis effected by the language
considered."

Bertrand Russell in a footnote of Principles of Mathematics