Introduction to Xinformatics
Course Scope, Assessments
Peter Fox
Xinformatics
ITEC 4962/6961, ERTH 4963/6963, CSCI 4960/6960
Week 1, January 24, 2012
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Contents
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Introductions
Course Outline
Application areas
Logistics and resources
Assessment and assignments
Learning objectives, outcomes
Introduction to Xinformatics
Discussion, etc.
Next class(es)
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Introductions
• Name, major, year
• Interests, goals, outcomes
• Have you completed any *suggested*
prerequisites:
– Knowledge such as that gained in a Data Base
class (e.g., CSCI-4380)
– Knowledge such as that gained in a Data
Structures class (e.g., CSCI-1200)
– Knowledge such as that gained in a Data
Science class (e.g. ITEC/CSCI/ERTH 6961-01)
• Questions
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Course Outline (tentative)
• Introduction to Informatics
• Capturing the problem: Use case development and
requirement analysis
• State-of-the-Art, informatics applications
• Information theory, models, tools
• Foundations; semiotics, library, cognitive and social science
• Information life-cycle
• Information architectures (Internet, Web, Grid, Cloud)
• Information Visualization, Information and Workflow
Management
• Information Discovery, Information Integration
• Class exercises, presentations** along the way
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Application Areas
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•
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Geoinformatics
Astroinformatics
Cheminformatics
Bioinformatics
Helioinformatics
Healthinformatics
Ecoinformatics
Nursing informatics
and the list goes on, and on
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Logistics
• Class: ITEC 4962/6961, ERTH 4963/6963, CSCI
4960/6960Hours: 9am-11:50am Tuesdays
• Location: JEC 3207
• Instructor: Peter Fox - pfox@cs.rpi.edu or
foxp@rpi.edu , x4862, TA: Abigail Fuller –
fullea6@rpi.edu
• Contact hours: Mondays 3pm-4pm (or by appt)
• Contact location: Winslow 2120 or JRSC 1W06
• *******Web:
http://tw.rpi.edu/web/Courses/Xinformatics/2012
Schedule, syllabus, reading, assignments, etc.
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Assessment and Assignments
• Via written assignments with specific percentage of
grade allocation provided with each assignment
• Via individual oral presentations with specific
percentage of grade allocation provided
• Via group presentations – depending on class size
• Via participation in class (not to exceed 10% of
total) – this works by ‘losing’ points by not
participating
• Late submission policy: first time with valid reason –
no penalty, otherwise 20% of score deducted each
late day
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Assessment and Assignments
• Reading assignments
–
–
–
–
Are given almost every week
Most are background and informational
Some are key to completing assignments
Some are relevant to the current week’s class (i.e. follow
up reading)
– Others are relevant to following week’s class (i.e. prereading)
– Undergraduates - will not be tested on but we will often
discuss these in class and participation in these is taken
into account
– Graduates – are likely to be tested as part of
assignments, i.e. an extra question
• You will progress from individual work to group work
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Objectives
• To instruct future information architects how to
sustainably generate information models, designs
and architectures
• To instruct future technologists how to understand
and support essential data and information needs of
a wide variety of producers and consumers
• For both to know tools, and requirements to
properly handle data and information
• Will learn and be evaluated on the underpinnings of
informatics, including theoretical methods,
technologies and best practices.
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Learning Objectives
• Through class lectures, practical sessions,
written and oral presentation assignments
and projects, students should:
– Understand and develop skill in Development
and Management of multi-skilled teams in the
application of Informatics
– Understand and know how to develop
Conceptual and Information Models and Explain
them to non-experts
– Knowledge and application of Informatics
Standards
– Skill in Informatics Tool Use and Evaluation
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Academic Integrity
• Student-teacher relationships are built on trust. For example, students
must trust that teachers have made appropriate decisions about the
structure and content of the courses they teach, and teachers must trust
that the assignments that students turn in are their own. Acts, which
violate this trust, undermine the educational process. The Rensselaer
Handbook of Student Rights and Responsibilities defines various forms
of Academic Dishonesty and you should make yourself familiar with
these. In this class, all assignments that are turned in for a grade must
represent the student’s own work. In cases where help was received, or
teamwork was allowed, a notation on the assignment should indicate
your collaboration. Submission of any assignment that is in violation of
this policy will result in a penalty. If found in violation of the academic
dishonesty policy, students may be subject to two types of penalties. The
instructor administers an academic (grade) penalty, and the student may
also enter the Institute judicial process and be subject to such additional
sanctions as: warning, probation, suspension, expulsion, and alternative
actions as defined in the current Handbook of Student Rights and
Responsibilities. If you have any question concerning this policy before
submitting an assignment, please ask for clarification.
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Questions so far?
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Introduction to Informatics
• E.g. Bioinformatics
– Over the past few decades, major advances in
the field of molecular biology, coupled with
advances in genomic technologies, have led to
an explosive growth in the biological information
generated by the scientific community. This
deluge of genomic information has, in turn, led to
an absolute requirement for computerized
databases to store, organize, and index the data
and for specialized tools to view and analyze the
data.
– http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/About/primer/bioinfor
matics.html
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Tell us more…
• Bioinformatics is the field of science in which biology,
computer science, and information technology merge to form
a single discipline.
• The ultimate goal of the field is to enable the discovery of
new biological insights as well as to create a global
perspective from which unifying principles in biology can be
discerned.
• At the beginning of the "genomic revolution", a bioinformatics
concern was the creation and maintenance of a database to
store biological information, such as nucleotide and amino
acid sequences.
• Development of this type of database involved not only
design issues but the development of complex interfaces
whereby researchers could both access existing data as well 14
as submit new or revised data.
And…
• Ultimately, however, all of this information
must be combined to form a comprehensive
picture of normal cellular activities so that
researchers may study how these activities
are altered in different disease states.
• Therefore, the field of bioinformatics has
evolved such that the most pressing task now
involves the analysis and interpretation of
various types of data, including nucleotide
and amino acid sequences, protein domains,
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and protein structures.
And…
• The actual process of analyzing and interpreting
data is referred to as computational biology.
Important sub-disciplines within bioinformatics and
computational biology include:
– the development and implementation of tools that enable
efficient access to, and use and management of, various
types of information
– the development of new algorithms (mathematical
formulas) and statistics with which to assess relationships
among members of large data sets, such as methods to
locate a gene within a sequence, predict protein structure
and/or function, and cluster protein sequences into
families of related sequences
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One result – myexperiment.org
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Definitions
• Data - are pieces of information that
represent the qualitative or quantitative
attributes of a variable or set of
variables.
• Data (plural of "datum", which is seldom
used) - are typically the results of
measurements and can be the basis of
graphs, images, or observations of a
set of variables.
• Data - are often viewed as the lowest
level of abstraction from which
information and knowledge are derived
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Definitions ctd.
• Information
– Representations (of facts? data?) in a form that
lends itself to human use
– The word information derives from the Latin
informare (in+formare) meaning to give form,
shape, or character to. It is therefore to be the
formative principle of, or to imbue with some
specific character or quality.
• Knowledge
– Check out Wikipedia…. meaning
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Definitions ctd.
• Metadata – data about data
• Metainformation – information
about information
• Documentation – integrated
collection of information and
metadata intended to support all
aspects of data (find, access,
use…)
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Full life cycle of data
Micro
Data-Information-Knowledge
Ecosystem
Producers
Consumers
Experience
Data
Creation
Gathering
Information
Presentation
Organization
Knowledge
Integration
Conversation
Context
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TWC Curriculum tw.rpi.edu/web/Courses
Producers
Consumers
Experience
Data
Creation
Gathering
Information
Presentation
Organization
Knowledge
Integration
Conversation
Data Science Xinformatics Semantic eScience
Context
Web Science
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The Information Era: Interoperability
Modern information and communications
technologies are creating an
“interoperable” information era in which
ready access to data and information can
be truly universal.
Open access to data and services
enables us to meet the new challenges
of understand complex systems:
•
•
•
•
•
managing and accessing large data sets
higher space/time resolution capabilities
rapid response requirements
data assimilation into models
crossing disciplinary boundaries.
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Shifting the Burden from the User
to the Provider
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Fox CI and X-informatics - CSIG 2008, Aug 11
Earth is a complex system of
systems
23 March 2016
Data is required from
© GEO
multiple observation networks
. . . Secretariat
slide 26
and systems . . .
Local in-situ Networks and Systems
Air pollution
measurement
station
Emden,
Germany
Local and national air
pollution networks
Venice, Italy, and
Indonesia
23 March 2016
© GEO Secretariat
Other forms of information
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Information explosion
• Devices are everywhere, but … by 2020
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And, gulp, unstructured
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The key is:
• As volume, complexity and heterogeneity
increase…
– Suddenly information may look more like a
continuum
– All known methods, algorithms will not scale
(except for very simple operations)
– And because it is information, humans are part of
the loop
• Thus – we need to understand and apply the
theoretical foundations
• Problem: all to date are developed in an
analog world, not a digital one!!
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Mind the gap
• As capabilities and needs grow on both
sides: science/
medicine/science
engineering
– and
 Informatics
- information
includes
the
technology:
science
of (data and) information, the practice
information
and thescience
engineering
• of
There
is/ was processing,
still a gap between
and
of
Informatics
studies the
theinformation
underlyingsystems.
infrastructure
and technology
structure,
behavior, and interactions of natural
that is available
and artificial systems that store, process and
• communicate
Cyberinfrastructure
the new It also
(data and)is
information.
researchitsenvironment(s)
that
support
develops
own conceptual and
theoretical
advanced data
data and
foundations.
Since acquisition,
computers, individuals
storage, data
data
organizations
all management,
process information,
integration,
mining, data
informatics
hasdata
computational,
cognitive and
visualization
and other
computing
social
aspects, including
study
of the social
and information
processing
services
impact
of information
technologies.
Wikipedia.
over the Internet.
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But really it’s not just one field
Informatics
IT Cyber
Infrastru
cture
(CI)
Cyber
Informatics
Core
Informatics
Science
Informatics
Science,
Benefit to
others
• CI = Discipline neutral, e.g. web server, database, wiki
• Cyberinformatics = mapping to discipline neutral aspects
• Core informatics = Reasoning engine, semantics, computer science
• Science (X) informatics = Use cases, science domain terms, concepts in
an ontology or controlled vocabulary
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A moment of history
• In the late 1950’s (actually around 1957-1958
or 1962 depending on what you read) the
modern informatics term was coined
• Existed for a while but then split into library
science and computer science and developed
their own fields, became disconnected
• Now coming back to be relevant to science
• Informatics IS NOT just having a scientist
work with an “IT/ICT” person (NOT, NOT,
NOT)
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Cyberinformatics
• The first match between the domain and the
underlying domain-neutral e-infrastructure/
cyberinfrastructure
• When the underlying infrastructure (when it
becomes real infrastructure and not just
software) changes this is one part that needs
to change
• Less brittle since upper layers remain intact
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Core informatics
• The realm of computer science (for the most
part, also librarians)
• Strongly influenced by science (and
engineering and medical applications) above
and below this layer
• If we can leverage this, we do not need to do
the specialist work, however …
• We must work with these scientists,
sustainably
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Science Informatics
• Where science meets the underlying
technical capabilities and methods
• Must be expressible in science terms;
increasingly use cases
• The people in this area are multi-lingual and
both interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary,
few are trained or literate here ******
• Team, or really a community of practice
(CoP)
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THE PHYSICS OF INFORMATION
BORROMEAN RINGS
Three interlinked circles that
represent inseparable parts of
the whole. Remove any one
ring and the other two fall
apart.
Because of this
property, Borromean Rings
have been used as a symbol
of unity in many fields.
© 2005 EvREsearch LTD
•Information has three indivisible ingredients –
content, context and structure.
•The ability to automatically utilize the inherent
structure of information is the threshold in information
management from hardcopy to digital media.
EvREsearch©
Not a perfect story
• Many authors criticize the use of the term
entropy, and physics of information
• Information conservation, diffusion, viscosity,
advection, dissipation… sort of all make some
sense
• Units are a big part of it (question: what are the
possible units?) and what are the nondimensional numbers?
• However the idea is very relevant to modeling,
design and architecture
• We’ll revisit the components of the physics of 39
information
Information theory
• Semiotics, also called semiotic studies or
semiology, is the study of sign processes
(semiosis), or signification and
communication, signs and symbols, into three
branches:
– Syntactics: Relation of signs to each other in
formal structures
– Semantics: Relation between signs and the
things to which they refer; their denotata
– Pragmatics: Relation of signs to their impacts on
those who use them
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Library science
• Curates the artifacts of knowledge but
increasingly: (yes) information
• Organizes and manages them for consumers
– Cataloging and classification
• Preservation
– ‘maintaining or restoring access to artifacts,
documents and records through the study,
diagnosis, treatment and prevention of decay and
damage’ (wikipedia)
• Digital age
– Curation and preservation
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HISTORY OF INFORMATION THRESHOLDS
INFORMATION TRANSPORT
INFORMATION ERAS
DIGITAL
PAPER
PAPYRUS
CLAY
STONE
6000
5000
4000
3000
2000
1000
TIME (years before present)
0
INFORMATION INTEGRATION
INFORMATION VOLUME
FUTURE
© 2005 EvREsearch LTD
Social Science
• Branch of humanities
• Especially as it relates to networks of
scientists
• Exploits sociology of groups, teams
• Cultural norms as well as discipline norms
– Modes of what and how rewards are given
– Between those who produce and those who
consume data and information
– How you collect, understand, model and design
models and architectures is as much social as
technical skill
43
Cognitive Science
• Cognitive science is an interdisciplinary study of
the mind and intelligence
• It operates at the intersection of psychology,
philosophy, computer science, linguistics,
anthropology, and neuroscience.
• Of relevance for data and information science
are three significant theoretical underpinnings
– mental representation,
– the nature of expertise,
– and intuition
• Very relevant to models, modeling, metamodel
choice
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Use Case
• … is a collection of possible sequences of
interactions between the system under
discussion and its actors, relating to a particular
goal.
• The collection of Use Cases should define all
system behavior relevant to the actors to assure
them that their goals will be carried out properly.
• Any system behavior that is irrelevant to the
actors should not be included in the use cases.
– is a prose description of a system's behavior when
interacting with the outside world.
– is a technique for capturing functional requirements of
business systems and, potentially, of an IT system to
support the business system.
Use Case
• Must be documented (or it is useless)
• Should be implemented (or it is not well
scoped)
• Is used to identify: objects ~ resources,
processes, roles (aka actors), requirements,
etc.
• Scopes and guides what is implemented
Preview of Information Models
• Conceptual models, sometimes called domain
models, are typically used to explore domain
concepts
• High-level conceptual models are often created as
part of initial requirements envisioning efforts as
they are used to explore the high-level static
business or science or medicine structures and
concepts.
• Conceptual models are often created as the
precursor to logical models or as alternatives to
them
• Followed by logical and physical models
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Object models
• A data model is a logic organization of the
real world objects (entities), constraints on
them, and the relationships among objects.
– A database (DB) language is a concrete syntax
for an object (data) model.
– A DB system implements that model.
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Architectures
• Building on content, context,
and users, some illustrate
information architecture as
an iceberg.
• Just like an iceberg, the
majority of information
architecture work is out of
sight, "below the water."
• The work includes the
creation of plans, controlledvocabularies, and blueprints
all before any user interfaces
are created.
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Above the water and below
• Design, design, design
• Of the interfaces, architecture, of the social,
cognitive, etc. elements of information
‘systems’
• Almost all are design to support two basic
modes of investigation: induction and
deduction… but enough of that for now
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Information life-cycle
52
Visualization
53
Workflow Management
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Discovery, Integration
• Discovery (mostly about libraries!)
– Digital Fluencies
– Federated Search
– Folksonomies
– Information Literacy
– Intelligent Agents
– Search Engines
– Taxonomies
• Integration (mostly about application tools)
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Discussion
•
•
•
•
•
About informatics?
Definitions?
Applications?
Components?
Theory (we’ll start on this soon)
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Skills needed
• Modeling, theory, architecture experience?
– Nah, we’ll cover that
• Literacy with computers and applications that
can handle information
– Yep
• Ability to access internet and retrieve/ acquire
data
– Oh yea
• Presentation of assignments
– Ditto
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What is expected
• Attend class, complete assignments (esp.
reading, be prepared to give comments when
asked in subsequent classes)
• Participate (e.g. reading)
• Ask questions
• Work both individually and in a group
• Work constructively in group and class
sessions
• Next classes Jan 31 and Feb 7 …
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Also on the web
• Reading assignments – are intended to
prepare you for following lectures and may be
considered materials for written assignments
or project
• Assignments will be posted there
– Individual
– Group
• Abigail is your first contact for assignment
questions
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What is next
• Next week – topic may change??
• Some time ~ some guest presentations:
– Bioinformatics
– Astroinformatics
– Geoinformatics
• Reading for this week
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