[rdfweb-dev] Re: Parsing FOAF in perl?

[Jim Ley]

"Danny Ayers" <danny666 at v...>
> I've not read the paper yet, but am
> very curious what variables are you plugging into the algorithm - what
is
> the significance of two people being close together on the map?

The input is a Distance Function defining the distance between 2 people,
the current one is purely the length of path between 2 people, so if A
knows B, path length=1, if A knows B and B knows C, the path length A-C
is 2. Making this more complicated and interesting is something to do.

> >Implementing this means I've had to implement Damians path finding
> >algorithm, which is very useful, although how paths might be exposed
in
> >the foafnaut interface is an "opportunity", especially with the
stability
> >problems making it difficult to have large datasets.
>
> Have you got a ref for Damien's algorithm please.

http://rdfweb.org/people/damian/2002/02/foafnation/

> >Any feedback useful.
>
> Apart from the Rugby Player (heh) effect, the only bit that stands out
is
> the jumping around of the whole lot in the early cycles.

Well, I think that's how the algorithm works, I don't know how you could
keep Edd central - it would run faster if I didn't update the position
for people to see, but I quite like seeing it working.

> One idea - imagine that a
> system scrapes the content from the pages included in peoples foaf
data.
> Generate a vector of values from word frequencies, and use that as
input to
> the SOM. People with similar pages (and hence presumably interests etc)
> should get grouped together.

Yep, switching it to a different distance function would be an easy
modification.

Cheers,

Jim.