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  • From: Richard Morris <webmaster@pfaf.org>
  • To: pcplantdb <pcplantdb@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [pcplantdb] comments on 0.2.0
  • Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2005 01:50:01 +0100

Chad Knepp wrote:
Responding to Stephanie's private email on the list because I think it's
good stuff.


Should uses (i.e. hedge, cancer) be capitalized like the other
headings are?


Either capitalized or not but all the same, unlike the actual data
which has some of each. I just did a string.lower(use), but could
change it to string.upper(use[1]) pretty easy. What do others think?

I'm for capitilisation.

Results take the form of ``Family name [space] Genus + Species name.''
For example, a search for co rn gives ``Gramineae Zea mays.'' I fear
that users will click on the family name thinking that it w ill take
them to the plant (in this case, Zea mays) and will not realize that
this is what they did . Can we perhaps put the family name on another
line, or separate both with a comma? For example:

Zea mays
Gramineae

Or

Zea mays, Gramineae

The other option is a table style of display, with columns for Botanical, Common Name and family.

This is where I like to take direction from Bear. I get the confusion
though. I prefer the later (one line) and will go with that until I
hear different from Bear.

Can this be a CSS thing? If data is marked up as
<span class="Latin Name">Zea mays</span>
<span class="Family">Gramineae</span>
Then I think it could be arranged by the style sheet.

In what order are search results returned and why? (How is order
determined?)

Order is determined by relevance score, the number on the left. One
of the reasons I think that sorting alphabetically is a bad idea is it
ignores the context of relevance. Alphabetically sorted a search
result may have the best match somewhere in the middle or near the
end. Tell me again why this is good... I mean imagine if google
sorted results alphabetically. I put a visible relevance score back
into 0.2.0 so folks can see it. Rich suggested translating this into
different sized graphics (trees) at one point.

It depends on the type of search. For plants there is a lot more order in the names I've found it easier locate plants when they are arranged
alphabetically.

A table based layout could be a way round this there could be three columns

Botanical Name|Common Name|Ranking|... other stuff we want to display

a user could click on a column heading to order by that field.
Alternativly this could be in a user preference or a set of radio buttons.
URL could end with &ORDERBY=Common etc.

Is there a limit to how long search strings can be? Because I searched
for ``ground cover perennial shrub edible drought tolerant nitrogen
fixer'' and it only returned ``ground cover perennial shrub edible.''
I don't think there should be a limit to search string length.


Yes, I limit it to 5 words in the general search for performance
issues. This does need an upword limit (but could be larger than 5)
because of possible malacious uses such as the inserting the contents
of Moby Dick. Eden: Ishmael, hmmm, I'm not finding anything...

This is fine, its rare for the pfaf site to have more than three or more words (2%)
Those with four or more words are (complete list)

Love in a mist
r g d o i s
Hebe speciosa Cockayne y Allan
love in a mist
Quercus macrocarpa x robur
Plants for a future database
Morus alba x rubra
look for a new species
clerodendrum serratum L moon
castanea crenata X C. sativa
Love in a Puff
Arctostaphylos nevadensis x viscida
Altemanthera sessilis L R Brex Roem
Aechmea blanchetiana x fulgens
tree in a hurry
sen iLLeGaL i aptal mi sandin ?
pictures of a Rape Plant
picture of a plant
p e p p e r
mother of a thousand babies
LILY OF T HE VALLEY BUSH
bl e e l
aster pot n patio
alternative name for a persimmon

Some strange ones in there?

For the harder to find free text search the five or more word searches are:

"a geographic analysis of historical grizzly bear sightings in the north cascades
"grows well in heavy clay" flower
Drought and frost tolerant trees
Medicinal uses of Blue Camas
Noah's ark plant or Moses in the Bush plant
Parisites living on exterior of humans
Plants found only in Japan
Virginia pink flowers in fall ground cover
WILD ONIONS OF NEW ENGLAND
a weed that has purple patches
bellshaped flowers growing on a shrubb
bipinnate compound leaf and pinnately netted veined leaf and connate and oblong and rounded
british columbia edible ground cover
chalk y soil AND tree
chemical composition of couch grass and by-products from it
citrullus lanatus van doren strain
confirmatory test for the extraction of eleusine indica
cream tube with red tips
dark green leaves purple flower
dry soils in the UK
early spring white flowering shrub
edible plants in Northeast America
evidence of thyme as an effective medicinal
fibrous roots zone 3 groundcover
fruit tree with maple leaf shape
fruit tree with maple leaf shaped leaves
germination of a lima bean
green and yellow striped leaves
ground cover full shade texas
ground cover weed with purple flower
ground coverage in shady rock areas
grow fast rate good timber
grows well in heavy clay
has orange sap and cleans gallstone
high transpiration rate and salt tolerance
history of herbal use used in modern
history of herbal use and used in modern
history of herbal use used in modern
hu meng qing yan pian
immune to the predations of rabbits and deer
large leaves with black fleks
long history of herbal use
long pointy leaves and similar to trumpet flower
mediterranean and south and africa
name of unusual flowers and trees that come alive at night
parsely like folage and pink blooms
perennial agricultural crop temperate rainforests
perennial flowers have jagged edges
pink flowers in fall ground cover
pink or white bellshaped flowers growing on a shrubb
plant names that grow in britian
plants and shrubs hardy in desert
plants in carlsbad mountain area
plants that grow in shade
plants that have dule uses
poison or toxic and animal
pores on a leafs surface that take in carbon dioxide
powdery mildew on squash leaves
purple star shaped leaves with red flowers
purple trumpet type flowering plants
red berry yellow autumn new england
red berry yellow new england
reddish-brown basketry and textile dye
resistant to oak root fungus
small divided leaves and purple flowers
small reddish-orange flowers and edible fruit
sticky green plant which has bobbles on it
thicken Mexico seed pod climber
things that come from a plant
vine with yellow daisy like flowers
white flower attracts humming birds
white green flower with red
yellow flower cut leaf perennial
yellow flower cut leaf perennial shrub
yellow flower cut leaf perennial shrub vine
yellow flower cut leaf shrub
yellow flower cut leaf shrub vine
yellow bell flowers on large bush
yellow flower perenial ground cove

Again note these are only a small fraction of total searches.
Zipf rule again mainly single word and two word queries.

High percentage of queries here come from the pre-canned
queries. i.e. ones which I've done by hand and made into clickable links.


Interesting though, most of those words in your example are part of
the controlled vocabulary. Should have produced interesting
results...


Are you planning to incorporate +, AND, OR (Boolean features)?
Currently, it ignores lower case and , but seems to include upper case
AND without actually using it. I'm a bit confused are you still
working with this?

Also, it seems to ignore quotation marks if I want to search two words
together (i.e. ``three siste rs). Can we incorporate quotation marks
to keep multi-word terms intact?

Both of these things are what I mean when I alluded to a search
grammar. I think this would make a good feature request if we can
agree on the definition of the grammar.


Does bring up the issue of punctuation. Heres the different searches for "St. John's Wort" (actual spelling we use).

187 COM=st. johnswort
41 COM=st. john's wort
8 COM=st john's wort
7 COM=St. John's Wort
7 COM=st. john's wort
6 COM=st johns wort
5 COM=saint johns wort
4 COM=St. John's wort
4 COM=saint john's wort
4 COM=john's wort
3 COM=St John wort
3 COM=saint johnswort
2 COM=St Johns Wort
2 COM=St. john's wort
2 COM=st. johns wort
2 COM=Saint Johns wort
2 COM= saint john's wort
1 LAT=Hypericum perforatum COM=St. John's Wort FAM=hypericaceae
1 LAT=Hypericum perforatum COM=St. John's Wort
1 LAT=hypericum COM=st. john's wort
1 LAT=hypericum COM=marsh St. John's wort
1 LAT=Hypericeum Kouytchense COM=st johns wort
1 COM=St. John's Wort oil
1 COM=St. John's Wort o
1 COM=St Johns Wort Extract
1 COM=ST. John's Wort
1 COM=St. Johns Wort
1 COM=St John`s Wort
1 COM=St Johns wort
1 COM=St John's wort
1 COM=st. John's Wort
1 COM=st. John's wort
1 COM=st.johns wort
1 COM=st.john's wort
1 COM=st. johns wort
1 COM=st johnswort
1 COM= st john's wort
1 COM=Saint Johns Wort
1 COM=Saint John's Wort
1 COM=saint John's Wort
1 COM=large St. Johnswort
1 COM=kalm st johnswort
1 COM=hairy st john's wort
1 COM=Great St. John's Wort
1 COM=great st. john's wort
1 COM=giant saint johns wort
1 COM=creeping st. john's wort
1 COM=common st john's wort
1 COM=common saint johns wort

ideally we'ed want all those to hit the same plant. Tricky that is.

Perhaps we should include a page on search help, helping users search
most effectively. But I assum e the searching capabilities are still
evolving?

Good idea, but yes, we are still settling the actual feature set.



I seem to get way too many results, but as I mentioned above, I assume
search capabilities are stil l evolving (and will allow for more
refined searches that will return less results).


I don't think that too many results is a problem if they are sorted by
relevance. If you look at the scores on the side usually only about
1% have a relevance greater than 1. It could be a client side option
to limit the results to scores greater than 1 insuring a higher degree
of relevance.


I got 148 results for ``corn'' and 3179 results for perennial corn we
need quotation marks and/or +, AND!

Do ones with both "perennial" and "corn" come up higher?

It seems that the easiest/most common search users will want to do
will be to search for all variet ies of a given plant, i.e. corn. But
when I search for corn, I get all plants with any reference to
corn. So I try searching by family, but that includes many things that
are not corn. So I try sear ching by genus (``zea'') and I get
anything with ``zea'' in it (New Zealand, etc.) and I didn't eve n get
corn! There must be a way to get the results I want all varieties of
corn considering that this will be a very common search. How to make
this possible?


This is because there is only one search method in use and it happens
to search everything in the dataset. This is good for somethings, but
as you can see fails at more targeted searches. I think that
development of this area in particular will be the most rewarding for
end users. In particular I would like to make an advanced search form
that allowed searching any and all of botanical name, common name,
uses, attributes, cultivars, comments (Ken Ferns mostly), references,
and users. Press one button and bingo much better results.


I searched for chayote and got many results, none of which are chayote
or say ``chayote'' anywhere in their description. What's going on?


select * from botanical_name where common_name ='chayote';
Empty set (0.23 sec)

Chayote is a common name not currently in our dataset... Hmmm, maybe
we need a way to add more common names ;-) The reason you get matches
for it is because the sub-strings in chayote, 'chay' and 'ote' are
found as parts of other names.

Strange it's not only in our but not in all the other databases
I've searched.

I think this is because Squash - Cucurbita moschata has many different varities most of which are given specific trade names.
So Chayote is a variety name not a common name of a species.

Common names I do have for this plant are:
Butternut Squash [H], Calabaza [E], Crook-neck Squash [B], Crookneck Squash [P], Giraumont [E], Kado [E], Nan Kua [E], Neck Pumpkin [H], Qabagh [E], Tahitian Melon Squash [H], Waluh [E], Wo Kua [E],
[H] = Henriette's names database
[E] = Ethnobotany Database.
[B] = BONAP Database
[P] = UDSA'a Plants database

If you click on a family name, it simply takes you to search results
for that family. I assume we w ill elaborate here, add info about that
family? Family info seems critical to relationship-building and
substitution, right?

In some sense that is the correct behaviour, i.e. it gives the members of that family. There are some shared chateristics of families don't have too much real data for this.

Have a look at
http://www.ibiblio.org/pfaf/D_fam.html
and see if you can spot the similarities.

Not sure I'm following you here...

Right now, when you click on a use, i.e. hedge, there is no way to go
back without pressing the bac k button. We should add a button ``back
to search result,'' and/or add the option of searching by u se
(clicking on hedge would give you another list of plants that could be
used as hedges, and you c ould do an advanced search to limit search
results).


Not sure I agree with this. We also don't have back to previous page
buttons anywhere else either. Wouldn't we need those as well?

Good stuff. Lots to talk about.

Cheers,
Chad


Afew more search results for you all
these are the searches for latin of common names (as oposed to the specific plant pages looked up).

Here search are order acording to their frequency, I've shown
the top 27 plants and a selection from further down the list
second column is cumilitate number of hits, third
column is percentage of hits with that rank of lower
forth column is number of hits for that search

Rank 1 2426 1.13% 2426 COM=lily FAM=lilium
Rank 2 3621 1.68% 1195 COM=melon
Rank 3 4791 2.23% 1170 LAT=Astragalus
Rank 4 5941 2.76% 1150 LAT=musa
Rank 5 7018 3.26% 1077 COM=bean
Rank 6 8083 3.76% 1065 COM=kale
Rank 7 9095 4.23% 1012 LAT=Hypericum
Rank 8 10105 4.70% 1010 COM=chervil
Rank 9 11108 5.16% 1003 LAT=Ephedra
Rank 10 12069 5.61% 961 LAT=artemisia
Rank 11 12982 6.03% 913 LAT=Plantago
Rank 12 13769 6.40% 787 COM=willow
Rank 13 14514 6.75% 745 LAT=Potentilla
Rank 14 15255 7.09% 741 LAT=Origanum
Rank 15 15975 7.42% 720 LAT=rosa
Rank 16 16600 7.71% 625 LAT=Berberis
Rank 17 17191 7.99% 591 LAT=Centaurea
Rank 18 17773 8.26% 582 LAT=Eugenia
Rank 19 18302 8.51% 529 LAT=Mahonia
Rank 20 18773 8.72% 471 LAT=pelargonium
Rank 21 19227 8.94% 454 LAT=Betula
Rank 22 19676 9.14% 449 COM=heather
Rank 23 20118 9.35% 442 LAT=Lavandula
Rank 24 20557 9.55% 439 LAT=Gentiana
Rank 25 20991 9.76% 434 LAT=campanula
Rank 26 21418 9.95% 427 LAT=Cornus
Rank 27 21844 10.15% 426 LAT=Angelica
Rank 163 43106 20.03% 83 LAT=Dryopteris
Rank 506 64560 30.00% 55 COM=moss
Rank 2394 107578 50.00% 11 COM=gotu kola
Rank 5422 129102 60.00% 5 LAT=Cryptantha
Rank 11456 150611 70.00% 3 COM=chicken wing
Rank 22490 172128 80.00% 1 LAT=viola etain
Rank 44007 193645 90.00% 1 LAT=dyckia

Point to note here is over 20% of searchs are only performed once.
Zipf law distribution (i.e. long tail) very much in evidence.

Rich




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