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Classification Made Relevant
How Scientists Build and Use Classifications and Ontologies
1st Edition - January 25, 2022
Author: Jules J. Berman
Language: English
Paperback ISBN:9780323917865
9 7 8 - 0 - 3 2 3 - 9 1 7 8 6 - 5
eBook ISBN:9780323972581
9 7 8 - 0 - 3 2 3 - 9 7 2 5 8 - 1
Classification Made Relevant: How Scientists Build and Use Classifications and Ontologies explains how classifications and ontologies are designed and used to analyze scientifi…Read more
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Classification Made Relevant: How Scientists Build and Use Classifications and Ontologies explains how classifications and ontologies are designed and used to analyze scientific information. The book presents the fundamentals of classification, leading up to a description of how computer scientists use object-oriented programming languages to model classifications and ontologies. Numerous examples are chosen from the Classification of Life, the Periodic Table of the Elements, and the symmetry relationships contained within the Classification Theorem of Finite Simple Groups. When these three classifications are tied together, they provide a relational hierarchy connecting all of the natural sciences.
The book's chapters introduce and describe general concepts that can be understood by any intelligent reader. With each new concept, they follow practical examples selected from various scientific disciplines. In these cases, technical points and specialized vocabulary are linked to glossary items where the item is clarified and expanded.
Explains the theory and practice of classification, emphasizing the importance of classifications and ontologies to the modern fields of mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology and medicine
Includes numerous real-world examples that demonstrate how bad construction technique can destroy the value of classifications and ontologies
Explains how we define and understand the relationships among the classes within a classification and how the properties of a class are inherited by its subclasses
Describes ontologies and how they differ from classifications and explains conditions under which ontologies are useful
Upper division undergraduate students, graduate students, and researchers across a broad range of STM disciplines who need to organize and analyze information; graduate students, researchers and professionals in library science, computer and data science
Cover image
Title page
Table of Contents
Copyright
Other books by Jules J. Berman
Dedication
About the author
Preface
1: Sitting in class
Abstract
Section 1.1. Sorting things out
Section 1.2. Things and their parts
Section 1.3. Relationships, classes, and properties
Section 1.4. Things that defy simple classification
Section 1.5. Classifying by time
2: Classification logic
Abstract
Section 2.1. Classifications defined
Section 2.2. The gift of inheritance
Section 2.3. The gift of completeness
Section 2.4. A classification is an evolving hypothesis
Section 2.5. Widely held misconceptions
3: Ontologies and semantics
Abstract
Section 3.1. When classifications just won’t do
Section 3.2. Ontologies to the rescue
Section 3.3. Quantum of meaning: The triple
Section 3.4. Semantic languages
Section 3.5. Why ontologies sometimes disappoint us
Section 3.6. Best practices for ontologies
4: Coping with paradoxical or flawed classifications and ontologies
Abstract
Section 4.1. Problematica
Section 4.2. Paradoxes
Section 4.3. Linking classifications, ontologies, and triplestores
Section 4.4. Saving hopeless classifications
5: The class-oriented programming paradigm
Abstract
Section 5.1. This chapter in a nutshell
Section 5.2. Objects and object-oriented programming languages
Section 5.3. Classes and class-oriented programming
Section 5.4. In the natural sciences, classifications are mono-parental
Section 5.5. Listening to what objects tell us
Section 5.6. A few software tools for traversing triplestores and classifications
6: The classification of life
Abstract
Section 6.1. All creatures great and small
Section 6.2. Solving the species riddle
Section 6.3. Wherever shall we put our viruses?
Section 6.4. Using the classification of life to determine when aging first evolved
Section 6.5. How inferences are drawn from the classification of life
Section 6.6. How the classification of life unifies the biological sciences
7: The Periodic Table
Abstract
Section 7.1. Setting the Periodic Table
Section 7.2. Braving the elements
Section 7.3. All the matter that matters
Section 7.4. Great deductions from anomalies in the Periodic Table
8: Classifying the universe
Abstract
Section 8.1. The role of mathematics in classification
Section 8.2. Invariances are our laws
Section 8.3. Fearful symmetry
Section 8.4. The Classification Theorem
Section 8.5. Symmetry groups rule the universe
Section 8.6. Life, the universe, and everything
Index
No. of pages: 444
Language: English
Edition: 1
Published: January 25, 2022
Imprint: Academic Press
Paperback ISBN: 9780323917865
eBook ISBN: 9780323972581
JB
Jules J. Berman
Jules Berman holds two Bachelor of Science degrees from MIT (in Mathematics and in Earth and Planetary Sciences), a PhD from Temple University, and an MD from the University of Miami. He was a graduate researcher at the Fels Cancer Research Institute (Temple University) and at the American Health Foundation in Valhalla, New York. He completed his postdoctoral studies at the US National Institutes of Health, and his residency at the George Washington University Medical Center in Washington, DC. Dr. Berman served as Chief of anatomic pathology, surgical pathology, and cytopathology at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Baltimore, Maryland, where he held joint appointments at the University of Maryland Medical Center and at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions. In 1998, he transferred to the US National Institutes of Health as a Medical Officer and as the Program Director for Pathology Informatics in the Cancer Diagnosis Program at the National Cancer Institute. Dr. Berman is a past President of the Association for Pathology Informatics and is the 2011 recipient of the Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award. He is a listed author of more than 200 scientific publications and has written more than a dozen books in his three areas of expertise: informatics, computer programming, and pathology. Dr. Berman is currently a freelance writer.
Affiliations and expertise
Freelance author with expertise in informatics, computer programming, and cancer biology