Dr. Vert's Ch. 6 Summary - Essay Example

Chapter 6 of Dr. Vert’s book focuses on data, or information, as well as managing that information with the use of databases. It also s that not all information that is used in the world today fits perfectly into a given database, and for that reason, different ways to manage the information are needed. Dr. Vert makes it clear that databases are the current way that most people search for data, especially when looking for information about a particular subject. The databases that are used today rely on each and every piece of information being ‘managed’ and stored in a particular way, so that as much information of a subject possible is available to be shown when it is needed.

However, the trouble comes in because not all information is able to be put into a category easily, and because of that, it might fit into two or more categories. It also becomes confusing because one piece of information might relate to another in a very small way, but both should still be available, so that the person searching the information could see it and use it, if they wanted to. Most of the issues that come with managing information of this type are related to ‘spatial information’, or information that would be better characterized by the space it occupies rather than the information it actually holds.

Examples of this are things such as street maps, climate maps, and scientific records of events such as earthquakes and tsunamis. The biggest issue that is faced in trying to retrieve and make sense of information about these events is that many pieces of information are scattered over many different computers, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that has been dumped from its box and scattered throughout a room. It becomes more of a scavenger hunt to put the pieces of the puzzle together than to figure out the picture the puzzle tries to represent.

Think about how much time is being wasted looking for the different pieces of the puzzle. Dr. Vert is making the same point – rather than putting many different pieces of information into many different places, putting information together makes more sense, so that the puzzle can be put together. Taking the example of the jigsaw puzzle again, what would happen if someone opened the box and put all the pieces of one color together, because of that color? They would have ‘managed’ the data of the puzzle, but probably could not accomplish putting together the whole picture, because they still need the rest of the pieces. Dr. Vert suggests that rather than managing each and every piece of information, a ‘set model’, or the putting together of information by sets, would be a better method for handling information about things that require more ‘space and time’ labels.

The main example used is searching for the length and time of a tsunami. The searcher would more than likely be very frustrated, because different pieces of information would be in different categories and different databases, and it would be up to the searcher to gather all the data and make any notes, as well as interpret the information. Dr. Vert also explains that this problem is not confined to those in the fields of science – other industries, such as the IT industry, have the same problem with managing information in different databases, because the information, though it has a relationship with other information, will not always be recalled when needed.

To relieve this problem, Dr. Vert speaks about putting data into what is called a ‘fuzzy set model’, or a model based from the fact that not everything fits into a set based on one or two labels. First, put everything into a bigger, more general ‘set’ of information. Then, make smaller categories, but with very loose ways of managing the information. Think again of the jigsaw puzzle example – storing all of the pieces together, in one box, though they may not all look the same, is still the easiest solution, because all the pieces come together to form a picture that makes sense.

The same example is true in the case of information searches – those who search for it are trying to form a picture, not spend time analyzing every piece and where it fits.