[tdwg-content] Treatise on Occurrence, tokens, and basisOfRecord [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]

[joel sachs]

Hmm, perhaps I had no good reason to assume that Event was being used as a 
shorthand for (Location, Time). I can see that there is a DwC:event 
implied by every occurrence record, even when that event is nowhere 
described. (And now I see that Rich thinks that Event does equal Location 
+ Time, and further see that this could get wiry.)

But my objection isn't to Occurrence=(Individual, Event). I simply 
think that we're better off conceiving of occurrences as tuples, rather than defining them as intersections, or products, or 
whatever.


Joel.


On Thu, 28 Oct 2010, joel sachs wrote:

> On Thu, 28 Oct 2010, Arlin Stoltzfus wrote:
>
>> On Oct 28, 2010, at 11:58 AM, joel sachs wrote:
>>
>>> Hey Rich, Hilmar, Paul, and everyone -
>>>
>>> I liked the definition from a couple of weeks ago:
>>>
>>> "An occurrence is a tuple consiting of time, place, individual, and
>>> some
>>> optional properties."
>>>
>>> What's that lacking?
>>
>>
>> Nothing, but the form of "occurrence" as a 3-way relation between a
>> thing, a place and a time might be less amenable to formal reasoning
>> than some other formulations, depending on how its rendered.
>
> It might be. But I haven't seen any examples of the kind of reasoning that
> the alternative definitions seek to enable. Did I miss them?
>
>> I thought that was the reason others had introduced "event" as place +
>> time.   Otherwise, what is the reason for "event"?
>
> I was wondering the same thing. Event=(Location, Time) strikes me as
> weird, for a couple of reasons:
>
> i. Intuitively, an event is something that happens at a region of
> space/time, not the region itself.
>
> ii. More significantly, a DwC:event is a container for metadata that gets
> attached to occurrences via eventID. A DwC:event corresponds to the
> intuitive definition above, since you can have multiple DwC:events over
> the same space/time region, e.g. two groups surveying for different taxa,
> using different methodologies.
>
> Joel.
>
>
>>
>> Arlin
>> -------
>> Arlin Stoltzfus (arlin at umd.edu)
>> Fellow, IBBR; Adj. Assoc. Prof., UMCP; Research Biologist, NIST
>> IBBR, 9600 Gudelsky Drive, Rockville, MD
>> tel: 240 314 6208; web: www.molevol.org
>>
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