AN EXPERT-SUPPORTED APPROACH TO DATA EXPLORATION A thesis submitted to the University of Dublin, Trinity College for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Cormac Hampson Knowledge and Data Engineering Group (KDEG) School of Computer Science Trinity College, Dublin,
[email protected] Supervised by Dr. Owen Conlan Declaration I, the undersigned, declare that this work has not been previously submitted as an exercise for a degree at this or any other University, and that, unless otherwise stated, it is entirely my own work. __________________________ Cormac Hampson May 2011 ii Permission to Lend or Copy I, the undersigned, agree that the Trinity College Library may lend or copy this thesis upon request. __________________________ Cormac Hampson May 2011 iii Acknowledgements Many people have provided support to me during the course of my Ph.D. studies. Firstly, I would like to thank my supervisor Dr. Owen Conlan for his guidance and many helpful contributions to this research over the years. I would also like to express my gratitude to my colleagues in KDEG who have been so generous with their time since I joined Trinity College. A special mention must go to Dr. Rachael Rafter and Dr. Alex O'Connor for their time and feedback while I was compiling this thesis. Furthermore, I would like to thank Meltem Gürel, Thomas Hengster, Virgile Brouard and Aonghus McGovern, whose work with various incarnations of SARA and SABer helped to shape their implementation greatly. Many thanks are also due to Peter Williams for helping to initiate this research path many moons ago. I would also like to acknowledge my sponsors who funded this research: The Embark Initiative of the Irish Research Council for Science, Engineering and Technology, funded by the National Development Plan; and Science Foundation Ireland via grant 08/IN.1/I2103 — Adaptive and adaptable media and services for dynamic personalisation and contextualisation (AMAS).