Viewpoint Of Representation Research Articles

The role of determination and assignment in measurement

What characterizes measurement with respect to generic evaluation? The representational model to measurement theory appears to underestimate this problem, which is of primary importance to justify the claimed objectivity of measurement. Indeed measurement has the two-fold nature of an empirical and a symbolic operation, so that both these components must be taken into account in its formalization, which should emphasize the central role played by measuring systems in qualifying the operative character of measurement. From this perspective the paper suggests that the peculiarities of measurement as a specific form of evaluation can be meaningfully interpreted in terms of the distinction between determination and assignment. After an analysis of the basic characteristics of these concepts and their relations, the paper describes a functional model of a measuring system and proposes a formalization for the concept of measurement that is based on such a model and specifies the representational point of view. Hence, measurement assumes the connotation of a homomorphic evaluation realized by means of a measuring system.

The Region Exhibited

The state of museums in Japan underwent a drastic change after the late 1960s. The number of museums has increased and, beyond this, the social awareness of museums has been enhanced dramatically. Recent years have seen a remarkable increase in the establishment of ‘local’ museums, built and operated by individual municipalities, with themes concentrating on local history and culture. This change has given rise to heated discussion on the role of museums in terms of museology, history, and folklore, especially in relation to the issue “museums and the local community”. Such debate is not restricted to Japan, but has been experienced in Europe and North America where there has also been considerable community based museum activity in recent years. Such debate has focused typically on problems like “museums and local identity”, and “the conservation of communal past and tradition”, and has raged both within and outside the museum service.This paper reviews the theoretical development of museum studies in Japan and in Europe and North America, and discusses the perspectives taken towards regional museums. The two sections following the introduction explain the recent outlook of museums in Japan and the theoretical and practical developments concerning local museums. The ideas propounded by Toshiro ITO on local museology are looked at in particular. His proposals for ‘local-oriented-museums for local citizens’, where displays focus on local subject matter and aim at seeking closer local integration, are studied because of the great impact these ideas have had on the present practices in local museums. Although the intention has been for ‘better’ museums, this movement has not been without problems. For example, ‘localities’ and ‘local cultures’ are often assumed to be “natural” and “fixed”. The ideas of Benedict Anderson concerning the “imagined community” may prove useful here. Although museums depend on the beneficence of public authorities (with responsibility for an administrative region), museums offer the opportunity for awareness of a new communal identity. There exists plenty of scope for discussion about the role of museums as the process and medium through which notions of ‘region’, ‘self-image’, and ‘local culture’ are both created and brought to public awareness.One approach within Anglophone museum studies has been to view the museum as a means to “make ourselves”. The fourth section of this paper reviews Anglophone museum studies from the viewpoint of representation of ‘others’ and of ‘selves’. First, ‘museums as a representation of others’ is explored. This approach arose from a reexamination of Western museum history and ethnography. The general thinking is that, in the past, Western anthropologists, in particular, could achieve no more than stereotype imagery of other cultures in museum exhibitions. It was, as Susan Pearce puts it, “the appropriation of culture”. Second, ‘museums as a representation of selves’ is considered. Today, it seems that more and more people, even nations, are making enquiries about the ownership of cultural assets held in museum collections. This issue presents problems such as “who is the rightful owner of material culture?” and “who should control the presentation of such culture?”. Responses vary from “restoring self-identity” to such as the indigenous minority peoples of North America to “an explanation of the creation of a wider national identity”. Third, the question of “how to express self?” is addressed. Whatever the context, museums attempt to conserve and even recreate past objects and situations.

Expert systems for image processing: Knowledge-based composition of image analysis processes

Recently several expert systems for image processing were proposed to facilitate the development of image analysis processes. They use the knowledge about image processing techniques to compose complex image analysis processes from primitive image processing operators. In this paper, we classify them into the following four categories and discuss their objectives, knowledge representation, reasoning methods, and future problems: (1) consultation system for image processing, (2) knowledge-based program composition system, (3) rule-based design system for image segmentation algorithms, and (4) goal-directed image segmentation system. In the latter half of the paper, we emphasize the importance of image analysis strategies in realizing effective image analysis: analysis using the pyramid (multi-resolution) data structure, combination of edge-based and region-based analyses, and so on. We propose two methods of representing image analysis strategies: one from a software engineering viewpoint and the other from a knowledge representation viewpoint. Several examples are given to demonstrate the effectiveness of these methods.

On Redfield's Range-Correspondences

In an important paper (7), long overlooked, J. H. Redfield dealt with several aspects of enumerative combinatorial analysis. In a previous paper (1) I showed the relation between a certain repeated scalar product of a set of permutation characters of a symmetric group and Redfield's composition of his group reduction functions. Here I consider, from a group representational point of view, Redfield's idea of a range-correspondence and its application to enumeration of linear graphs. The details of the application of these ideas to more general enumerations are also given.