Talk:Karen Spärck Jones

Query

Query: I don't believe that K S-J's start date for working at the Computer Laboratory was as late as 1974. I worked there as her research assistant from 1977 to 1979, and I'm sure she'd already been a fixture for some years before that. CAW. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.94.166.182 (talk) 12:46, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes. More is needed there, particularly about her transition from school teaching. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 14:13, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

So I've followed up these comments.

1) I'm sure the 1974 date was arrived at from official Cambridge records when we were getting bombarded with info for obituraries immediately after Karen's death. The official Cambridge CV says from 1968 she was a Royal Society Scientific Information Research Fellow. In my experience the fellowships are (or were) actually directly to the individual on a self-employed basis, so the fellow can move them at will (someone correct me if I'm wrong), hence the discrepancy. Prior to that she was at Newnham and previously the Cambridge Language Research Unit. However it must be remembered how very rare, expensive, and precious Computers (and hence computer programmers) were in the 1960's. Chris - I take it it is you - will remember the song and dance when we got the fourth megabyte of RAM on the Cambridge mainframe around 1979! You may remember the main service was still running on the research prototype Titan in 1968!

So I'm sure Karen was a familiar figure: but I think the probability is that she was not an employee before 1974.

With regards to School Teaching, I did discuss this with Karen. Karen admitted she had unreasonable expectations of the girls she taught (no surprise there then!). I suspect she was not a good teacher,and was certainly not happy. Masterman had funding but not people. Given the passage of time I think it may be hard to find out more, but I will try. John Irving Tait (talk) 11:40, 3 April 2013 (UTC)John Tait

I've added a bit more detail from the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, which has highlighted a contradiction related to this. The wiki page, following the Cambridge obituary, states that she worked at the Cambridge Language Research Unit from the late 50s, whereas the ODNB says she moved there in 1962, and was teaching prior to this. I don't have any further evidence either way, so have left it as is. Could the teaching she was doing prior to 1962 have included teaching at the CLRU as well as the school teaching, which would resolve this contradiction? The links to two of the obituaries (the Independent and the Telegraph), which may give further evidence, are broken.Fionamcneill (talk) 18:36, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

References

She wasn't a systems scientist?

I added Ms. Spärck Jones to Category:Women systems scientists because she is currently a member of Category:Systems scientists (see "+" below), but my edit was reverted with this edit summary: "She wasn't a systems scientist". If she was not a systems scientist, then she also should be removed from the non-gendered category.

+

Category:Fellows of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence -> Category:Artificial intelligence researchers -> Category:Systems scientists

XOttawahitech (talk) 18:17, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

Yes, she should be removed from the non-gendered category (the issue that categories shouldn't be gendered, much discussed in the media as a problem with wikipedia, is a second issue). Dr Spärck Jones worked in artificial intelligence, natural language processing and information retrieval, which are not systems science. I asked a colleague of hers, someone who knew her very well, if he knew of anything she had worked on that could be considered systems science, and he said no, that was never her area. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 20:18, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

@Sminthopsis84: Just to address your concern saying "categories shouldn't be gendered", that is exactly the reason she was placed in both a gendered AND a non-gendered category. This arrangement allows those traversing the category tree looking for Artificial intelligence researchers to find her, but also those looking for women who work in the field to find her. Am i making sense? Please notify me when you respond. Thanks in advance, XOttawahitech (talk) 14:11, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

That makes sense from a category-traversal point of view, but the fuss in the media is so huge that I don't want to touch it. Dr Jones would be an excellent example of someone who was able to get past the gender boundary, and to label her by gender, especially without asking her consent, seems heavy-handed. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 16:23, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Aha. That turns out to be a computationally ironic problem. In this 2008 edit someone got their hierarchy inverted, they added three subcategories as supercategories. :) Sminthopsis84 (talk) 16:23, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

@Sminthopsis84: Thanks for looking this up. Have you tried contacting the author of the 2008 edit? Are you saying that Category:Cyberneticists and Category:Systems scientists are branches of Artificial intelligence and not the other way around? If so, can you find an article on Wikipedia that says that?

Also the article says Karen Spärck Jones FBA which in turn says: The British Academy is the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and the social sciences - not sure what the connection is to Artificial intelligence. Any further thoughts? XOttawahitech (talk) 00:50, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

I can't fully answer the first question. Wikipedia seems to say this:

systems science

cybernetics

control theory

but I don't know if that is so. A colleague offers "There’s no a priori reason that they should have a hierarchical relationship at all — as opposed to being overlapping interdisciplinary studies — but I simply don’t know enough about them." Artificial intelligence is separate, but may contain a bit of each of the other disciplines, so a specialist could work on control theory, cybernetics, or even systems science aspects of artificial intelligence, and the hierarchical relationship would hold for that person.

About the FBA, Dr Jones's work was interdisciplinary, partly on natural language understanding, which overlaps with humanities disciplines. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 11:16, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

In reply of Sminthopsis84's notification, two things first:

• The classification of science is no exact science, especially when it comes to determining main subdivisions. The term "systems science" is used in the Wikipedia category tree as such major subdivision.
• Looking at individual scientists, one can ask if the scientist specifically contributed to the systems science discours, or not.

Now to this specific question,

• Both in the systems science article, and in the Outline of science#Systems science Artificial intelligence is not (or no longer) listed as field of systems science.
• The Category:Artificial intelligence is not (or no longer) listed under the Category:Systems science

So the Category:Artificial intelligence researchers should be no longer directly listed under the Category:Systems scientists. -- Mdd (talk) 12:25, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

She isn't in Category:Artificial intelligence researchers - should she be? It isn't clear from the article, though some stuff above suggests she should be. She is in the "Computer scientists" cat, which is clearly correct. Wiki at Royal Society John (talk) 16:35, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Yes, absolutely. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 23:23, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

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