Group 3

Opium in Afghanistan

or

It’s better than Excedrin!

Question reformulation(otherwise known as “bollixing it up”)

• Analyst question 1: “what process is used to produce opium?”– Immediately broken down into: chemicals, seeds,

soil type, climatic factors, labor, machinery, harvesting…

• Researcher reformulation: “what is the process of opium production in Afghanistan?”– Strategy: try general overview first; see what

is easily found

• Oracle/system response: “do you want– Opium production process – Opium production in Afghanistan?”

A good system knows when it answers

only part of the Q

Do you first ask a general Q?

Reformulation added too much specificity

Analyst rapidly develops plan of attack, which

becomes report structure

System needs to know what kind

of A to deliver

Process continued • AQ2: “what areas currently produce

opium?” • RR: “in what areas of Afghanistan is

opium produced?”• OR: Map with drug-growing areas

highlighted, and related chart • AQ 2a: “give me raw data, raster overlays

of where cultivation is possible” • RR: “in what areas is growth of opium

possible? [in GIS]” • OR: no response

Analyst wants to specify media;

system should handle

Analyst knew thereare people at NIMA;

system should provide links to experts

when they are found

Input• For a new task, provide context / background

– Keywords, documents, etc. – Personal expertise profile (languages spoken, etc.) – Session plan/profile evolving answer doc

• Provide current goal– Early on, in long-term study prefer longer/discursive answer – Then, or for quick question prefer shorter/factoid/table answer

• Ask question!

• Provide additional constraints– Data type– Source: web, NIMA, etc. – Date: last 2 days, past month, past year, etc.

text map numbers charttime series

anything

Context: doc metadata • Subtopic 1: XXXX• Subtopic 2: YYY ZZZZ• …

“By which routes does processed opium leave Afghanistan?”

Output Goodness

scoreAnswers Data

formatSource,

date, etc.…Experts

0.87 “summary” text Web

11/93

www.abc.gov

Joe

0.75 “summary” text+pics CIA Set J

3/4/03

Martha

0.72 map NIMA

current

Steve, 344-827-9199

Related info

“summary” text Web

12/2/01

One thought: evolving documentTOPIC: Opium in AfghanistanANALYST: JeffDATE: 6/11/03TOPIC DESCRIPTION: “Write a report…”

• SUBTOPIC 1: production – “xxx xxxx xx xxxx xx” www.abc.com “yyy y yy yyy y”– “zzzz zz zz zzzz zz” – “pp ppp p pp p”

• SUBTOPIC 2: political/economic impact – “qq qq qqqq q qq” www.xx.yy.mil

• …

Accessible to system:

Can place new info properly

Accessible to colleagues’ systems: can

cross-reference

Some lessons

• General strategy of broad-to-narrow information search for this type of task, but the sequence of decomposition/subtopics differs by goal, analyst, and organization

• Both IR and QA technology are important, together with Info Management, GIS, etc.

• Maps (and other media) are crucial (exploration resources as well as results)

• Important metadata: source time, search time, attribution/sources, reliability, objectivity, justification, relevance, etc.

• Handling perspectives/contradictory/missing/partial/etc. info

• Question syntax, misspellings, etc.: systems must be smart/tolerant

• Use context to focus: general task, analyst profile, analytic perspective, etc.

• Integrate with other experts (internal and external)

• Maintain and use working document: Game Plan final report