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How do I use this tool?
When you want to find a connection between topics, you first type the
words describing each topic in the boxes at the top of the
screen. A network will appear. Take a look at the new topics connecting
the ones you just typed. Explore the ones you are familiar with. If you
are not familiar, look at the ones with most documents on it first (the
number of documents is next to the topic title).
More than the content of a topic, you will be interested in how a topic
relates to other topics. To find that, click over the hotspot (circle)
in then line connecting two topics. After you click you will see in the
document list
area, for each
topic, the documents ordered by the
degree of relation to the other topic. That is, if the two
end of a connection are the topics "java"
and "object oriented", you
will see the documents
about java ordered by their relation to "object oriented", and the
documents about "object oriented" ordered by their relation to "java".
Documents appearing in both topics will be highlighted in bright yellow.
Since you are looking for relationships...
What is a relationship? How do I find one?
A relationship is a way documents or ideas between two topics are
related.
The most usual forms of relationship are:
generalization: Topic A is a special kind of B, which is related
to C.
Example: Let' say the two topics are "Java" and "Garbage Collection",
but we
don't find anything talking about garbage collection in Java. However,
we
find a document where Java is described as an object-oriented language,
and
another one where the author uses a particular garbage collection
algorithm (mark-and-copy) to manage object allocation.
Since Java is an object-oriented language, then mark-and-sweep can be
used to implement garbage collection in
Java.
specialization: It's the opposite of generalization. In this
case, we
look for two topics, and we find a particular implementation, system or
tool
that is related to both topics.
common trait: Topic A is a kind of C, and Topic B is also a kind
of C, and both use C with the same purpose.
A variation of this relationship is both A and B using C for a certain
purpose.
When you see the documents between two topics and how they relate,
you
can see:
Documents appearing in both topics: The
easier case. Those documents
are deemed related to both topics. Read the document content to find
why.
No single document appears in both
topics, or the one appearing is not
relevant: In this case, the relation is not found in any single
document, but is more about what the documents are "about". For two
topics A and B, it can happen that some documents in A are
related to topic B, or some documents in B are related to topic A.
Again, explore the content of the documents to find out why they're
related. All the words the tool considered important in the
relation between the topics will appear highlighted in yellow inside
the document text.
Once you found a relationship, take
note of it: write it down. Write
down the topic titles, and how they relate. If you don't do
this, it is
easy to get lost and confused while exploring multiple relationships,
andyou will forget what you found.
How do I connect the two topics I am interested in?
To connect them, you will need at least 2 connections: one between one
topic and
an intermediate topic, and another between that intermediate
topic
and the other topic you are interested in. If you find common documents
in both connections, they are strong candidates to be the link between
the two topics. If you don't find a common document, then compare the
common points in both sides of the intermediate topic. What are they
about? Is there something general in common?
Next (and last):
An example of using the tool to find relationships
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