The Mike & Tyke challenge

[johnwdubois]

Background In analyzing discourse data, efficiency matters. To track all the mentions of a single referent through a conversation requires many steps, often repetitious. The annotator builds the Track chain one step at a time, adding dozens of Tracks (mentions) to the chain for a given referent (person referred to). If a whole conversation's worth of human referents are to be tracked, this raises the specter of annotating hundreds or even thousands of Tracks, which create dozens of different Trails (Track chains).
For anyone who needs to do the work of annotating Tracks, then, any strategy that makes the process more efficient and less boring will be greatly valued.

The Mike & Tyke Challenge

1. In the first 150 lines of the file "sbc006.rez", find every mention (whether the mention is a name, a pronoun, or a multi-word phrase) of each of the following 5 referents:
   • Mike
   • Tyke
   • Mom
   • John
   • the radio(s)
   • the car(s)
2. For each of the 6 referents, create a separate Trail (Track chain), and add the relevant mentions (Tracks) to it. Rename your Trail with the appropriate name (Mike, Tyke, Mom, etc.).
3. Use the QuickPick to focus each of your Track chains, and take a quick screenshot.
4. Export all your Tracks to spreadsheet files (Track.CSV and Trail.CSV, using the File > Export option of Rezonator.
5. For each Track, your CSV should provide a count of the number of words in the Track.
6. For each Trail, your CSV should provide a count of the number of Tracks in the Trail.

Screenshot The following is an excerpt from the middle of the challenge:

Hints

1. It's best to make sure the words in each mention (Track) are counted before leaving Rezonator!
2. Same for the number of Tracks (mentions) in each Trail (Track chain) .
3. How many different radios should be tracked?
4. The Search function could prove useful -- or not. How to use it effectively?

Evaluation

1. What's your fastest time to complete the Mike & Tyke challenge?
2. How many moves did you need to complete the challenge? (Moves that count include actions such as mouse-clicks, searches, etc.; but not counting navigation [use of arrow keys, etc.]).
3. Open the Track.csv file using a spreadsheet app such Google Sheets, Excel, or LibreOffice Calc. Look over the dat you have saved.
   • How useful is the exported data in this format?
   • What could be improved?
4. What is your accuracy?
   • How many false negatives: missed references?
   • How many false positives: Incorrectly attributed references?
   • How many inaccurate Chunks (words left out)?
   • How well do your answers agree with others?
5. What can you learn about how the following are tracked through a conversation?
   • person (human being)
   • thing (inanimate object)
   • possessee (a thing owned by someone)
   • possessor (the owner of a thing that is mentioned)

What to do: User testing and development As a Rezonator developer, what conclusions can be drawn from the results of the Mike & Tyke challenge?

1. Test the Mike & Tyke challenge with other users. When does the task become slow or tedious? What functions would users like to have to make it more efficient, and more enjoyable?
2. Identify strategies that make it possible to complete the Mike & Tyke challenge faster and more efficiently:
   • strategies that use existing Rezonator functions to efficiently complete the challenge
   • strategies that expand on existing Rezonator functions to efficiently complete the challenge
   • strategies that would require an entirely new Rezonator function. (How easy/hard would it be to provide this function?)
3. To prototype your proposed new Mike & Tyke strategies, consider the following:
   • Create a design mockup in Whimsical or Figma to show what the UI for the new strategies would look like.
   • Write pseudo-code to implement the strategy
4. Choose the most efficient Rezonator functions to efficiently solve the Mike & Tyke challenge. If appropriate, implement them.

Related to

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[gtroiani]

After I added a zero <0> to the data the Track chain in the picture broke and I could no longer carry out any operation on it (though the right-click menu displays correctly). I tried saving, closing the file, and reopening it again, but it did not help.