Accessible Reasoning with Diagrams (ARD)

Scientific advances today increasingly depend on understanding, manipulating and querying data. In addition, businesses that can capitalise on the value of information will have a competitive edge. This is especially true when businesses collect personal data: their ability to gain insight from it is dependent on compliance with complex, and often international, privacy laws. Typically, data has structure which can be described by formal mathematical statements called axioms. These axioms are typically written in symbolic, mathematical notations, which are inaccessible to most people. This is a serious shortcoming because ensuring the axioms are correct is particularly hard.

Our proposed solution represents a paradigm shift: we hypothesise that diagrams can be used instead of mathematical symbols to yield an accessible reasoning system. These diagrams are just as formal as the traditional mathematical approach. A particularly exciting aspect of our project is that it draws on both computer science and cognitive science, to address a long-held assumption that using diagrams makes modelling and reasoning accessible.

In addition to the rapid rise in quantity and availability of data, and the benefits this stands to bring to society if suitably understood, recent research has demonstrated that diagrams bring cognitive benefits over symbolic and textual notations. This cognitive offloading, identified using neuroscience approaches, shows that people find reasoning tasks significantly easier when using diagrams. These results mean that the time is right to design an accessible diagrammatic logic that is suitable for real-world modelling and reasoning.

The project is funded by the Leverhulme Trust and is a collaborative project with the University of Cambridge. The Investigators are Dr Gem Stapleton, Reader in Computer Science at the University of Brighton, and Dr Mateja Jamnik, Senior Lecturer at the University of Cambridge.

Project timeframe

The project will run from 2016 to 2019.

 

Project aims

This project marries two different fields, computer science and cognitive science. A unique aspect is the use of empirical studies to guide the development of foundational approaches to reasoning.

The major research contributions fall within two main streams:

Stream 1: diagrammatic reasoning, led by Mateja Jamnik, University of Cambridge

Stream 2: empirical evaluation, led by Gem Stapleton, University of Brighton

The objectives are to:

  1. develop case studies to identify core modelling and reasoning problems (Streams 1 and 2)
  2. qualitatively identify effective diagrammatic representations (Stream 2 )
  3. design an accessible diagrammatic logic for modelling and visual reasoning (Stream 1)
  4. develop empirically informed layout algorithms for diagrams (Stream 2 )
  5. implement a reasoning system for our diagrammatic representations (Stream 1
  6. test and empirically evaluate the accessibility of our system (Streams 2 and 1)

These objectives will be achieved by teaming two groups (for three years, employing a postdoc at each site) with the interdisciplinary expertise necessary for delivering world-leading contributions to diagrammatic reasoning and cognitive science.

Figure 1: A symbolic theorem about Nokia’s privacy model.

Figure 1: A symbolic theorem about Nokia’s privacy model.

Figure 2: A diagrammatic version of the theorem in Figure 1.

Figure 2: A diagrammatic version of the theorem in Figure 1.

Project findings and impact

Reducing miscommunication between disparate groups and improving model accuracy removes key risks relating to the processing of data, including safety or security implications. One example is in the area of personal privacy, which is of high importance to commerce and society because of the significant risks and costs associated with data misuse. The scale of potential losses can be extremely large, exceeding tens of millions of Euros, in addition to the immeasurable financial implications caused by reputational damage. However, at present, companies such as Nokia cannot devote the resources required to deliver (possibly risky) blue skies research, as it requires specialist expertise and is distant from commercialisation.

It is anticipated that as a result of this project, Nokia will be able to make rapid use of concept diagrams, potentially avoiding costly delays in production. Nokia and all of the end-users of their services will directly and immediately benefit through better specified privacy protection mechanisms. The fact that there are millions of Nokia end-users demonstrates the level and scale of impact that will be achieved by this research on diagrammatic logics. By extension, these types of benefits will arise for all end-users of our research.

Our results will also impact on basic research in computer science and in cognitive science. For the first time, a logic will be designed and implemented with human understanding and accessibility at the fore. Our results will give significant insight into human reasoning and which aspects of logic people find intuitive.

Research team

Dr Gem Stapleton

Mateja Jamnik, University of Cambridge (Principal Investigator)

Output

To be added following completion of the project.

Partners

Advisory Board

  • Dr Ian Oliver, a privacy expert at Nokia Networks in Finland
  • Adrienne Bonnington, an information analyst at Horizons Regional Council in New Zealand
  • Professor Christoph Benzmueller, Freie Universitaet Berlin, Germany
  • Professor Hari Narayanan, Auburn University, USA