Retrieval results on taxonomies

[confer...] Below you find some sources likely to be useful for the question on what taxonomies are. Some entries provide immediately useful -- i.e. insights causing -- notes.

• "taxonomies, the currently fashionable term for classification schemes" -- Willpower Information -- Information Management Consultants: Value of organised knowledge, by Jack Bryar. - CMS Watch, 2002-01-21 ("General information about taxonomies as used in buiness applications, with reference to the use of XML tags."), Taxonomy software to the rescue, Paola Maio. - Online Journalism Review, 2001-10-12 ("Brief review of automatic classification / categorisation software, with links to the Web sites of the following suppliers: Autonomy, EoExchange, Inxight, Mohomine, Quiver, Semio, Verity."), Where's my stuff? : Taxonomy and lexicon as keys to access, Mary Chitty. - Newton Upper Falls MA : Cambridge Healthcare Institute, 2002. ("Outline of a talk given to the [USA] Special Libraries Association, 10th June 2002. Includes links to a bibliography on taxonomies and related topics.")
• Google: Definitions of taxonomy on the Web:
  • This is the scientific discipline of naming organisms. It was started by Carolus Linné (Carl Linneaus), perhaps the most famous taxonomist. Taxonomy is one of the three branches of Systematics.
    www.bioinf.org/molsys/glossaryT.html
  • The theory and practice of classifying organisms.
    www.modernhumanorigins.com/t.html
  • The classification of organisms in an ordered system that indicates natural relationships.
    investigate.conservation.org/expeditions/guyana/glossary.htm
    Hm, is a classification part of a taxonomy?
  • The science or technique of classification of organisms
    susdl.fcla.edu/lfnh/currmat/Glossary.htm
  • the science of classification of organisms on the basis of their supposed evolutionary relationships. For more information see the classification of animals.
    museum.nhm.uga.edu/gawildlife/glossary/gawwglossary.html
  • The science of classifying plants and animals.
    animal-world.com/encyclo/reptiles/information/reptile_glossary.htm
  • the classification of organisms to show relationships to other organisms.
    www.mykoweb.com/CAF/glossary.html
  • The naming and assignment of organisms to taxa.
    www.edu.gov.nf.ca/curriculum/teched/resources/glos-biodiversity.html
    This one could be an onward/outreaching hint.
  • The science of naming and classifying organisms.
    www.cmdr.ubc.ca/pathogenomics/terminology.html
  • the science of classification of animals and plants
    www.deh.gov.au/coasts/publications/marine-fish-action/glossary.html
  • controlled vocabulary used primarily for the creation of navigation structures for websites. Often based on a thesaurus, but may have shallower hierarchies and less structure, for example, no related terms.
    members.optusnet.com.au/~webindexing/Webbook2Ed/glossary.htm
    Hm, is it really a controlled vocabulary? And, I assumed, a thesaurus were something more elaborated but a taxonomy? If I am right, taxonomies probably don't base on thesauri.
  • a set of controlled vocabulary terms, usually hierarchical. Once created, it can help inform navigation and search systems. An example of a simple or "enumerative" taxonomy: United States New York State New York City Manhattan
    www.edtechpost.ca/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GlossaryAnalysis
  • The classification, nomenclature, and laboratory identification of organisms (Do not confuse with taxidermy - stuffing dead animals)
    www.alken-murray.com/glossarybug2.html
  • The discipline of classifying organisms
    www.uoguelph.ca/~mammals/Mammalogy_2005_glossary.htm
  • The classification of items into larger categories. In the High School Transcript Study, the items are specific secondary school courses that are classified into broader groupings to define course content and level (eg, AP English, Remedial Math, Regular Science, and IB Social Studies).
    nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/glossary.asp
  • A type of facet in which the headings are arranged into a hierarchy. This is the most broadly useful type of facet, since thousands of headings can be organized into a presentable selection.
    facetmap.com/glossary/
  • The theories and techniques of naming, describing, and classifying organisms.
    www.students.ed.qut.edu.au/n2364379/MDB377/GlossaryPage.html
  • the scientific description, naming, and classification of organisms.
    www2.bishopmuseum.org/PBS/samoasnail/fgglossary.html
  • A scheme that partitions a body of knowledge and defines the relationships among the pieces. It is used for classifying and undertranding the body of knowledge. [22]
    www.ee.oulu.fi/research/ouspg/sage/glossary/
  • A taxonomy is a hierarchical data structure or a type of classification schema made up of classes, where a child of a taxonomy node represents a more restricted, smaller, subclass than its parent. Also see Ontology above
    www.xsb.com/glossary.html
  • The field of science that classifies life.
    www.sel.barc.usda.gov/scalenet/glossary.htm
    So, the difference between a classification and a taxonomy is, that the taxonomy focuses at life (related) topics?
  • the systematic arrangement of the animal (or plant) world in a natural order of evolutionary relationship. It is necessarly closely associated with nomenclature.
    www.uvm.edu/~jdecher/GoT.html
    So, the taxonomy is a classification of life forms, i.e. animals, plants, etc? (And a nomenclature is -- what? A taxonomy without the (hierarchical?) relationships (?) between the taxons (?)/taxa (?)/terms (?)?)
  • The science or principles of classifying organisms (plants) in established categories according to similarities and their natural relationships.
    www.scandiaspa.com/aromatherapy-glossary-terms.html
    So, additionally, "taxonomy" is a homonym? Once a classification of life forms, and once the science of creating such classifications -- means taxonomies, here?
  • the theoretical basis for classifying organisms.
    scarab.msu.montana.edu/historybug/glossary.htm
  • The classification, especially of plants and animal, on the basis of differences and similarities between them.
    www.twingroves.district96.k12.il.us/Wetlands/General/Terms.html
    Is "on the basis of differences and similarities between" the organisms really a distinguishing aspect taxonomies? -- Get these similarities and differences be mentioned in a taxonomy?
  • a classification of organisms into groups based on similarities of structure or origin etc
  • (biology) study of the general principles of scientific classification
  • practice of classifying plants and animals according to their presumed natural relationships
    wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
    So, a taxonomy might be focused not only to biology but to science altogether? -- But then, what discriminates it from being a classification? Are both terms (?) synonyms?
  • Taxonomy (from Greek ταξινομία (taxinomia) from the words taxis = order and nomos = law) may refer to either a hierarchical classification of things, or the principles underlying the classification. Almost anything, animate objects, inanimate objects, places, and events, may be classified according to some taxonomic scheme.
    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxonomy
    Too vaguely. That something can be classified's far from a definition of "taxonomy", isn't it?
• "These monophyletic groups may or may not align with one or more morphologically distinguished taxa, and thus may challenge existing classifications based on features such as fruiting body size and form, cutis micro-structure, spore dimensions, host, and geographic distribution. Taxonomy aims to reflect a natural classification of taxa, and molecular data offer a set of objective characters on which to base taxonomic decisions." -- Peter K Buchanan. "A taxonomic overview of the genus Ganoderma with special reference to species of medicinal and neutriceutical importance", Proc Int Symposium Ganoderma Sci, Auckland, 27-29 April, 2001
• "... All the metrics assume a taxonomy with some semantic order. ... A common method of measuring semantic similarity is to consider the taxonomy as a tree, or lattice, in semantic space. ... If all the edges (branches of the tree) are of equal length, then the number of intervening edges is a measure of the distance. The measurement usually used (Rada et al. 89) is the shortest path between concepts. This, of course, relies on an ideal taxonomy with edges of equal length. In taxonomies based on natural languages, the edges are not the same length. ..." -- Michael L. McHale, CiteSeer: "A Comparison of WordNet and Roget's Taxonomy for Measuring Semantic Similarity (ResearchIndex)"
• "Definition 1 (Core Ontology). A core ontology is a structure O := (C, <C ) consisting
  of a set C, whose elements are called concept identifiers, and a partial order <C on C,
  called concept hierarchy or taxonomy." -- Stephan Bloehdorn, Andreas Hotho, University of Karlsruhe, Institute AIFB,..., CiteSeer: "Boosting for Text Classification with Semantic Features", 2004
• "Taxonomies is probably the oldest and most widely used conceptual modeling tool still used in Web directories (e.g. in Google and Yahoo!), Content Management (hierarchical structures are used to classify documents), Web Publishing (many authoring tools require to organize the contents of portals according to some hierarchical structure), Web Services (services are typically classified in a hierarchical form), Marketplaces (goods are classified in hierarchical catalogs), Personal File Systems, Personal Bookmarks for the Web, Libraries (e.g. Thesauri [9]) and in very large collections of objects (e.g. see [13]). Although more sophisticated conceptual models (including concepts, attributes, relations and axioms) have emerged and are recently employed even for meta-tagging in the Web, almost all of them have a backbone consisting of a subsumption hierarchy, i.e. a taxonomy." -- Yannis Tzitzikas, Carlo Meghini, Nicolas Spyratos, "A Unifying Framework for Flexible Information Access in Taxonomy-based Sources", 2004
• "Taxonomies are very easy to build in comparison to other kinds of conceptual models." -- Yannis Tzitzikas, Carlo Meghini, Nicolas Spyratos, "Taxonomy-based Conceptual Modeling for Peer-to-Peer Networks"

So far, I think, I can conclude, A taxonomy is a (always? mono-hierarchic?) hierarchy of taxons. I am not sure yet, whether these taxons equal to "terms" or to "words", or if both differ from each other and from taxons, too. Also, the terms originate from a terminiology. Classification and thesaurus might be variants of a taxonomy. Ontology might be not a taxonomy, because -- I am not sure, but I mean I remember that ontologies don't need to be a hierarchy -- which a taxonomy apparently implicitly is.

• "[...] a taxonomy is the network which results from connecting headwords with the genus terms in their definitions but the concept of genus term is not formally defined; [...]" -- Ann Copestake, "An approach to building the hierarchical element of a lexical knowledge base from a machine readable dictionary", 1990 .-- features a snipped of a taxonomy, as an example
• "A Little History...
  Taxonomy originated in the life sciences and can be traced back to Aristotle's theory of categories. He 'espoused the idea that things are placed into the same category on the basis of what they have in common' (Taylor 1999, p174) and are arranged hierarchically with things either inside or outside the container. [...] One tool [...] is a taxonomy: a structured, often hierarchical, classification system of concepts or subject categories. Taxonomies speed up the process of retrieving records because end users can select from subject categories or concepts. This enables them to narrow the search field and find relevant information rather than relying solely on a blank text search field and their ability to construct an effective query. Taxonomies also provide "serendipitous guidance" by providing additional information that can be inferred by seeing where the concept is placed within the context of the taxonomy (Bruno and Richmond 2003, p45). [...] There are also worthwhile pre-built taxonomies in the public domain. The Taxonomy Warehouse (http://www.taxonomywarehouse.com/) provides a free directory of 501 taxonomies, thesauri, classification schemes and other authority files from around the world, plus information about taxonomy references, resources and events. The taxonomies are classified by 73 subject domains, such as patents, real estate, and taxation, each with ordering instructions." -- Susan Cisco, Wanda K. Jackson, "Demystifying Taxonomies : Taxonomy: Make or Buy"
• "An alternative approach is to use a taxonomy to classify items. A taxonomy is a
  controlled vocabulary for classifying information." -- Rebecca H. Augustyniak, Dawn B. Aguero, Amy M. Finley, "Transitioning from Knowledge Management to Portals: Creating Customized Data Delivery for End-Users"
• taxonomy vs ontology (very poorly researched: contains invalid claims like "Currently ontologies and taxonomies are all hand-built."): "[...] ontologies, which can be described as more formal versions of traditional taxonomies or Roget-type thesauri (Gruber 1993). [...] Somewhere in between lie taxonomies and browsable hierarchies which are clearly less rigorous than a fully specified ontology." -- Christopher Brewster, Yorick Wilks, "Ontologies, Taxonomies, Thesauri: Learning from Texts"
• "In the evolution of knowledge management, organising information into an intuitive topical hierarchy or taxonomy has proven to be an efficient and productive way for end users to not only find, access and retrieve but also to discover information (Logan & Knox 2003:2). [...] This chapter will investigate the origins of taxonomies; define taxonomies, describe why taxonomies are viewed as a solution within information and knowledge management, as well as the benefits of taxonomies in organisations." -- Marie-Louise Fouché, "The Role Of Taxonomies In Knowledge Management", 2006

Additional notes:

• taxonomies relate to taxa / taxons
• for some reason, I found noteworthy: www.willpower.demon.co.uk/thesbibl.htm#facets, Faceted Classification Glossary of Terms
• on ontologies, enroute, I noticed XSB, Inc. - Glossary, www.willpower.demon.co.uk/thesbibl.htm#ontologies
• Ontologies, Taxonomies, Thesauri: Learning from Texts (mirror)
• "Taxonomic Evidence And Robustness Of The Classification Applying Intelligent Data Mining": "G Perichinsky, M Servente, A Servetto, RG ... - Proceedings del VIII Congreso Argentino de Ciencias de la ..., 1797 - itba.edu.ar
  ... ABSTRACT Numerical Taxonomy aims to group in families, using so-called structure
  analysis of operational taxonomic units (OTUs or taxons or taxa). ..."
• "The Semantics of the Compound Term Composition Algebra" -- Tzitzikas, Analyti, Spyratos (2003): "A terminology is a finite set of names, called terms. A taxonomy is a pair" (T (?), ≤) "where" T (?) "is a terminology and is a reflexive and transitive relation over" T (?) ", called subsumption."
• "FASTAXON: A system for FAST (and Faceted) TAXONomy design": "However, building very big taxonomies is a laborious task vulnerable to errors and management/scalability deficiencies."
• "Using information content to evaluate semantic similarity in a taxonomy"

That's all. For now.<<

---