Re: action-152: "subsetting"

I think "extract" is sometimes more natural when speaking about it (says 
the German guy...), for example:
You can extract a vertical slice from a 4D grid coverage.
vs
You can subset a 4D grid coverage to a vertical slice.

Personally, I always use subset, just because you got to use something 
and subset is not overloaded that much sometimes.

Having said that, there are also collections of coverages. And in that 
case I usually speak of a filtered collection when I select coverages 
according to some criteria. But this is really just because collection 
filtering is an established term elsewhere. And of course you could also 
filter a satellite image so that it only includes the parts within a 
bounding box (a min max filter on latitude/longitude for example).

So, extract, subset, filter, it's all the same to me really. It's just 
that in some sentences/contexts one or the other sounds better because 
it is either more common or more natural. I agree though that "subset" 
is not common in the webby world, and I would say that "extract" is more 
associated with file unzipping.

Maik

Am 29.03.2016 um 13:22 schrieb Bill Roberts:
> Hi Kerry
>
> I find the notion of subsets of datasets a reasonable one. I 
> acknowledge that 'subsetting' is a relatively ugly neologism (though 
> there are a lot worse made-up words at use in the world of 
> technology!) But I'd be happy to use your suggested alternative of 
> 'extract' and 'extracting'.
>
> Cheers
>
> Bill
>
>
>
> On 29 March 2016 at 13:10, Kerry Taylor <kerry.taylor@anu.edu.au 
> <mailto:kerry.taylor@anu.edu.au>> wrote:
>
>     I have an objection to the use of the word ”subsetting”, prominent
>     in the spatial community and leaking also into other “big data”
>     technology discussions. It seems to have some heritage in the
>     statistical community, too.
>
>     I partly dislike it because it is not a word, but also because the
>     notion of a ‘subset’ feels wrong, as it treats a ‘dataset’ as an
>     unstructured ‘set’ of things, whereas this is very rarely the case
>     when “subsetting” is required.
>
>     The formal (and widely understood) mathematical notion of sets
>     seems inappropriate.
>
>     Normally, the known structure is a very important part of the
>     “subsetting” operation.
>
>     I do not think that “subsetting”  carries the intended meaning to
>     the audience for whom our writing is directed – at least not to
>     the “webby but not spatial expert” audience. I note ( probably due
>     to our influence) DWBP is now also speaking of ‘subsetting’.
>
>     I have some suggested alternatives I raise for consideration by
>     the SDW, ordered best-first in my opinion.
>
>     Noun     Verb
>
>     extract  extracting
>
>     snippet  snipping
>
>     selection selecting
>
>     snip  snipping
>
>     --Kerry
>
>