Communications of the ACM
Getting to the Bottom of Statistics
Researcher Heiko Paulheim
Credit: TUD
Technische Universitat Darmstadt (TUD) researchers have developed the Explain-a-LOD tool, which accesses linked open data (LOD) and automatically formulates hypotheses regarding the interpretation of arbitrary statistics.
The statistics to be interpreted are fed into Explain-a-LOD, which then automatically searches the troves of linked open data for associated records and adds them to the original set. Once that processing has been concluded, the system automatically formulates hypotheses based on the enhanced statistics. Users are presented with the resulting hypotheses in the form of phrases.
The researchers have tested their approach on several sets of statistics, including Mercer's standard-of-living study and Transparency International's corruption index. "What one obtains are mixtures of obvious and surprising hypotheses, such as 'cities where temperatures do not exceed 21°C during the month of May have high standards of living,' 'capital cities generally have lower standards of living than other cities,' or 'countries that have few schools and few radio stations have high corruption indices,'" says TUD's Heiko Paulheim.
From Technische Universitat Darmstadt
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