Follow the idea.
A concept, in three framesCount the reports.
Several reports can repeat one observation.
Follow the citation.
Inspect each step back to the source.
Evaluate the origins.
Different origins do not establish independence.
A WORKING DEFINITION
Provenance and shared origins
Provenance records where something came from and how it was derived. In this simplified citation model, a report points to what it cites; an observation ends a known path.
FOLLOW ONE EXAMPLE
Agreement has a history. Open it.
Six reports can reach O1 through several intermediate reports. That is six reports and one reached observation. A report with both a known origin and a missing branch belongs in both the known and unresolved counts.
Work through the investigation →WHERE THE CLAIM STOPS
Keep the assumptions attached.
Distinct origins do not establish independence, reliability or truth. An untraced report is missing lineage, not an extra observation.
Inspect this model’s assumptions and definitions
- Distinct origins do not establish independence, reliability or truth.
- Untraced reports are not additional observations.
- This bounded directed acyclic graph is a teaching model, not a complete provenance standard.
Definitions used in this instrument
- relation
- report-cites-target
- root
- unique-reachable-observation
- unresolved
- report-with-at-least-one-untraced-branch
- scope
- constructed-dag-40-nodes-80-edges
SOURCES & SCOPE
Read beyond the model.
W3C PROV Primer (2013) ↗
Primary background on provenance concepts. This teaching graph implements only a small citation relation, not the full PROV specification.
Greenberg (2009), How citation distortions create unfounded authority ↗
A primary citation-network study motivating inspection of citation paths. Its empirical network and subject-matter findings are not used as data here.
All example data, figures and exact calculations on this page are original constructed teaching material. Source publications provide conceptual background, not the example dataset.
Open the instrument →