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What Constitutes an Effective Representation?

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Book cover Diagrammatic Representation and Inference (Diagrams 2016)

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Abstract

This paper presents a taxonomy of 19 cognitive criteria for judging what constitutes effective representational systems, particularly for knowledge rich topics. Two classes of cognitive criteria are discussed. The first concerns access to concepts by reading and making inferences from external representations. The second class addresses the generation and manipulation of external representations to fulfill reasoning or problem solving goals. Suggestions for the use of the classification are made. Examples of conventional representations and Law Encoding Diagrams for the conceptual challenging topic of particle collisions are provided throughout.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Informatics, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK

    Peter C-H. Cheng

Authors
  1. Peter C-H. Cheng
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Correspondence to Peter C-H. Cheng .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. The University of Cambridge , Cambridge, United Kingdom

    Mateja Jamnik

  2. The University of Tokyo , Tokyo, Japan

    Yuri Uesaka

  3. Millersville University , Millersville, Pennsylvania, USA

    Stephanie Elzer Schwartz

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© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

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Cheng, P.CH. (2016). What Constitutes an Effective Representation?. In: Jamnik, M., Uesaka, Y., Elzer Schwartz, S. (eds) Diagrammatic Representation and Inference. Diagrams 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9781. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42333-3_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42333-3_2

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-42332-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-42333-3

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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