Group 3 Opium in Afghanistan or It’s better than Excedrin!
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Transcript of Group 3 Opium in Afghanistan or It’s better than Excedrin!
Group 3
Opium in Afghanistan
or
It’s better than Excedrin!
Question reformulation(otherwise known as “bollixing it up”)
• Analyst question 1: “what process is used to produce opium?”– Immediately broken down into: chemicals, seeds,
soil type, climatic factors, labor, machinery, harvesting…
• Researcher reformulation: “what is the process of opium production in Afghanistan?”– Strategy: try general overview first; see what
is easily found
• Oracle/system response: “do you want– Opium production process – Opium production in Afghanistan?”
A good system knows when it answers
only part of the Q
Do you first ask a general Q?
Reformulation added too much specificity
Analyst rapidly develops plan of attack, which
becomes report structure
System needs to know what kind
of A to deliver
Process continued • AQ2: “what areas currently produce
opium?” • RR: “in what areas of Afghanistan is
opium produced?”• OR: Map with drug-growing areas
highlighted, and related chart • AQ 2a: “give me raw data, raster overlays
of where cultivation is possible” • RR: “in what areas is growth of opium
possible? [in GIS]” • OR: no response
Analyst wants to specify media;
system should handle
Analyst knew thereare people at NIMA;
system should provide links to experts
when they are found
Input• For a new task, provide context / background
– Keywords, documents, etc. – Personal expertise profile (languages spoken, etc.) – Session plan/profile evolving answer doc
• Provide current goal– Early on, in long-term study prefer longer/discursive answer – Then, or for quick question prefer shorter/factoid/table answer
• Ask question!
• Provide additional constraints– Data type– Source: web, NIMA, etc. – Date: last 2 days, past month, past year, etc.
text map numbers charttime series
anything
Context: doc metadata • Subtopic 1: XXXX• Subtopic 2: YYY ZZZZ• …
“By which routes does processed opium leave Afghanistan?”
Output Goodness
scoreAnswers Data
formatSource,
date, etc.…Experts
0.87 “summary” text Web
11/93
www.abc.gov
Joe
0.75 “summary” text+pics CIA Set J
3/4/03
Martha
0.72 map NIMA
current
Steve, 344-827-9199
Related info
“summary” text Web
12/2/01
One thought: evolving documentTOPIC: Opium in AfghanistanANALYST: JeffDATE: 6/11/03TOPIC DESCRIPTION: “Write a report…”
• SUBTOPIC 1: production – “xxx xxxx xx xxxx xx” www.abc.com “yyy y yy yyy y”– “zzzz zz zz zzzz zz” – “pp ppp p pp p”
• SUBTOPIC 2: political/economic impact – “qq qq qqqq q qq” www.xx.yy.mil
• …
Accessible to system:
Can place new info properly
Accessible to colleagues’ systems: can
cross-reference
Some lessons
• General strategy of broad-to-narrow information search for this type of task, but the sequence of decomposition/subtopics differs by goal, analyst, and organization
• Both IR and QA technology are important, together with Info Management, GIS, etc.
• Maps (and other media) are crucial (exploration resources as well as results)
• Important metadata: source time, search time, attribution/sources, reliability, objectivity, justification, relevance, etc.
• Handling perspectives/contradictory/missing/partial/etc. info
• Question syntax, misspellings, etc.: systems must be smart/tolerant
• Use context to focus: general task, analyst profile, analytic perspective, etc.
• Integrate with other experts (internal and external)
• Maintain and use working document: Game Plan final report