joint occurrences?

Here's an interesting/scary problem, suitable for All Hallow's Eve...

Say I was to build a facet map for a TV soap opera. Of course there would be
facets for season/episode, characters, actors, story lines, etc.

However, what if I wanted (well, not me, I've got interesting clients, but
anyway) a comprehensive classification of all episodes wherein various
characters appeared in various states of undress ... hunky lead with shirt
off, evil nemesis flexing his biceps, etc. Complete with associated
references such as "in chains", "leather pants", "slinky nightwear".

This could be represented in a 2 dimensional table quite easily, but how
would something like this be represented in a facetted structure?

The problem, y'see, is that we can't simply use occurrences onto the
character facet plus occurrences onto the hot-n-steamy facet, otherwise
you'll get ambiguous results like:

    Episode 10x07 "Sands of Thyme"
        Characters:
            Evil Bob
            Hunky Hero
            That Midget Guy
            Willy the Salesman
            Biff his Brother
            Gran-ma Jones
            Fair Maiden Gwendolyne
        Hot-n-steamy
            leather pants
            biceps!
            slinky nightwear

So ... is it that midget guy that is flexing his biceps, while Gran-ma Jones
is wearing leather pants? Or Evil Bob both?

One solution is to build a new facet/topic-tree where the top level topics
are the characters, and each of the various hot-n-steamy topics are repeated
under *each* of those topics, thus producing an exhaustive (in more than one
meaning of the word) list of possible occurrences. Welcome to Halloween.

    Hot-n-steamy (facet)
        Evil Bob (topic)
            shirt off (sub-topic)
            biceps!
            leather pants
            slinky nightwear
            etc
        Gran-Ma Jones (topic)
            shirt off (sub-topic)
            biceps!
            leather pants
            slinky nightwear
            etc
        etc        

Occurrences would then appear as thus:

    Episode 10x07 "Sands of Thyme"
        Characters:
            Evil Bob
            Hunky Hero
            That Midget Guy
            Willy the Salesman
            Biff his Brother
            Gran-ma Jones
            Fair Maiden Gwendolyne
        Hot-n-steamy
            Evil Bob -> leather pants
            Gran-ma Jones -> biceps!
            That Midget Guy -> slinky nightwear


At this point most of you should be recoiling in horror, and not just at the
thought of That Midget Guy in slinky nightwear. Facets, anyone?

Apart from the combinatorial exponentiation, and all those redundant
combinations (urgh!), such a classification would also be opaque to
answering questions like "show me all the episodes where any character wore
leather pants".

Thoughts, anyone?

e.


------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~-->
Buy Ink Cartridges or Refill Kits for your HP, Epson, Canon or Lexmark
Printer at MyInks.com. Free s/h on orders $50 or more to the US & Canada.
http://www.c1tracking.com/l.asp?cid=5511
http://us.click.yahoo.com/mOAaAA/3exGAA/qnsNAA/0bmwlB/TM
---------------------------------------------------------------------~->

----------
Thanks for playing. To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
[email protected]

 

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/