VOEvent References

[Matthew Graham]

Hi,

Yes, with semantic workflows, you provide machine processible descriptions of what to do for different types of data, etc. The expert (human or machine) encodes the process knowledge once and then different blocks can be put together to create whatever workflow you want. For example, I want a survey to search for high variability high-proper motion stars observable from Kitt Peak, please construct it for me from which robotic telescopes to incorporate to data processing and analysis and final presentation of results with interpretative statistics.

	Cheers,

	Matthew


On Mar 16, 2011, at 2:58 PM, Roy Williams wrote:

> 
> 
> On 03/16/2011 2:04 PM, Matthew Graham wrote:
>> Get the humans out of the loop as much as possible - they can go "ah"
>> and "ooh" at pretty pictures. The future of astronomy is machine
>> astronomy.
> 
> Matthew
> 
> Yes of course. The events are created and processed by machines. But the *streams* are built and connected up by humans who know what they are doing, like I have been doing with many event authors in the last 2 years.
> 
> Building the stream is like setting the thermometer in the house (a human activity), followed by the heating system going on and off 1000s of times (automated activity), analogous to the event delivery and processing.
> 
> The human understands that there is a light curve, and arranges for automated analysis of it, with the *knowledge* that the analysis is scientifically suitable for the data.
> 
> Are you suggesting that more formalism in the VOEvent structure could somehow replace this human understanding?
> 
> Roy
>