Based on the feedback to make the labels more explicit and also remove examples from the definitions, here are the revised labels and definitions for what were originally "quantity" (now "organismQuantity") and "quantityType" (now "organismQuantityType"):
organismQuantity
#Definition A number or enumeration value for the quantity of organisms. Use with organismQuantityType to indicate the type of entity that is being quantified.
#Comment The terms organismQuantity and organismQuantityType are required to be used as a pair. The value of organismQuantity is a number or enumeration, e.g., “27” for an organismQuantityType “individuals”, “12.5” for an organismQuantityType “%biomass”, or “r” for an organismQuantityType “BraunBlanquetScale”.
organismQuantityType
#Definition The type of entity to which the number or enumeration value reported for the quantity of organisms in organismQuantity refers.
#Comment The terms organismQuantity and organismQuantityType are required to be used as a pair. The value of organismQuantityType (i.e., the entity being measured) is expected to be drawn from a small controlled vocabulary with terms such as “Individuals”, “%Biomass”, “%Biovolume”, “%Species”, “%Coverage”, “BraunBlanquetScale”, “DominScale”. Examples when combined with organismQuantity values: + on DominScale; 5 on BraunBlanquetScale; 45 for %Biomass.
-----Original Message----- From: Eamonn O Tuama [GBIF] [mailto:eotuama@gbif.org] Sent: 17 December 2014 18:13 To: tuco@berkeley.edu Cc: Eamonn O Tuama [GBIF]; Markus Döring; Paul J. Morris; TDWG Content Mailing List Subject: Re: [tdwg-content] Fwd: [dwc] quantity (#12)
"Tweaking the terminology" as suggested by Simon looks like the solution. Those more explicit labels should work. I will revise the definitions and examples accordingly. Eamonn
Then is there anything wrong with giving more explicit labels, such as "organismQuantity" and organismQuantityType?
On Wed, Dec 17, 2014 at 4:03 PM, Eamonn O Tuama [GBIF] eotuama@gbif.org wrote:
Hi John,
The intent is to capture just one measurement (i.e., abundance/density/coverage - however the dataset is reporting quantitative information on organism presence in a sampling event) - hence the proposal to place the terms quantity and quantityType in the Occurrence class as properties on an equal footing with individualCount, etc. By "buried", I was just contrasting with the more generic properties of MeasurementOrFact where you have to look up the value of measurementType to determine the entity. In contrast, our quantityType (i.e., abundanceType) is more direct. I can see that use of the word "quantity" can make quantityType seem very generic but it was the best and most neutral one we came up with to cover the various ways of reporting organism numbers in a sample.
Eamonn
Hi Éamonn,
Your reference to "buried" makes me curious. If you create the terms quantity and quantityType, they could appear as two "columns" in a
Simple
Darwin Core record. That is, they could accommodate only one type of measurement per record. To do other than that the terms would have to
go
into an extension, where they would be exactly as "buried" as they
would
if you used measurementOrFact. Am I missing something?
Cheers,
John
On Tue, Dec 16, 2014 at 9:02 AM, Éamonn Ó Tuama [GBIF] eotuama@gbif.org wrote:
Simon's distinction of scaled number vs discrete set could probably
be
captured using DWC MeasurementOrFact properties. However, as
discussed
previously, we felt that because measurements of abundance/density/coverage were of fundamental importance in field studies, and in the spirit of DwC's pragmatic approach, they merited their own high level term(s), rather than "burying" them under MeasurementOrFact - hence the proposal of "quantity" and "quantityType" where the term "quantity" seems the most inclusive label for what we are trying to express.
Following John's recommendation, we have removed the references to examples in the definitions and expanded the examples in the comment section so it is clear how they are to be used.
quantity
#Definition A number or enumeration value for the entity being quantified in quantityType. #Comment The terms quantity and quantityType are required to be used as a
pair.
The value of quantity is a number or enumeration, e.g., “27†for a quantityType “individualsâ€, “12.5†for a quantityType “%biomassâ€, or “r†for a quantityType “BraunBlanquetScaleâ€.
quantityType
#Definition The entity to which the number or enumeration reported in quantity refers. #Comment The terms quantity and quantityType are required to be used as a
pair.
The value of quantityType (i.e., the entity being measured) is expected
to
be drawn from a small controlled vocabulary with terms such as “Individualsâ€, “%Biomassâ€, “%Biovolumeâ€, “%Speciesâ€, “%Coverageâ€, “BraunBlanquetScaleâ€, “DominScaleâ€. Examples when combined with quantity values: + on DominScale; 5 on BraunBlanquetScale; 45 for %Biomass.
Éamonn
-----Original Message----- From: tdwg-content-bounces@lists.tdwg.org [mailto: tdwg-content-bounces@lists.tdwg.org] On Behalf Of Markus Döring Sent: 15 December 2014 15:48 To: Paul J. Morris Cc: TDWG Content Mailing List Subject: Re: [tdwg-content] Fwd: [dwc] quantity (#12)
"r" is a value for very few individuals in the Braun Blanquet cover abundance scale which is used a lot in vegetation studies. It is like various others a non continous scale with discrete values. I do not think we should restrict quantity to contious numeric scales.
Markus
Am 15.12.2014 um 15:36 schrieb Paul J. Morris mole@morris.net:
Markus can probably answer this question:
What would be the expected value of QuantityType for a Quantity of
"r"?
A comment Bob Morris occasionally makes is: "1 is greater than 2
for
sufficently large values of 1". If some particular quantity type
has
a standard set of codes that represent numbers, then it might be appropriate to use those standard codes as values of quantity.
-Paul
On Mon, 15 Dec 2014 12:48:06 +0100 John Wieczorek tuco@berkeley.edu wrote:
Der all,
I am forwarding this comment from Simon Cox, which was submitted
to
the Darwin Core development site on Github.
Cheers,
John
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Simon Cox notifications@github.com Date: Mon, Dec 15, 2014 at 4:47 AM Subject: Re: [dwc] quantity (#12) To: tdwg/dwc dwc@noreply.github.com Cc: John Wieczorek tuco@berkeley.edu
'quantity' usually implies an amount, encoded as a scaled number. In most other domains it does not include a value from an
enumerated
set. The latter may be called 'quality'. Both quantity and quality are subclasses of 'property'.
— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/tdwg/dwc/issues/12#issuecomment-66946784.
-- Paul J. Morris Biodiversity Informatics Manager Harvard University Herbaria/Museum of Comparative Zoölogy mole@morris.net AA3SD PGP public key available _______________________________________________ tdwg-content mailing list tdwg-content@lists.tdwg.org http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-content
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