Seeing things: Inventive reasoning with geometric analogies and topographic maps

This paper examines two seemingly unrelated qualitative spatial reasoning domains; geometric proportional analogies and topographic (land-cover) maps. We present a Structure Matching algorithm that combines Gentner’s structuremapping theory with an attributematching process. We use structure matching to solve geometric analogy problems that involve manipulating attribute information, such as colors and patterns. Structure matching is also used to creatively interpret topographic (land-cover) maps, adding a wealth of semantic knowledge and providing a far richer interpretation of the raw data. We return to the geometric proportional analogies, identify alternate attribute matching processes that are required to solve different categories of problems. Finally, we assess some implications for computationally creative and inventive models. Diarmuid P. O’Donoghue, Ph.D.: He received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. from University College Cork in 1988 and 1990, and his Ph.D. from University College Dublin. He has been a lecturer at the Department of Computer Science NUI Maynooth since 1996 and is also an associate of the National Centre for Geocomputation. His interests are in artificial intelligence, analogical reasoning, topology, and qualitative spatial reasoning. Amy Bohan, B.Sc, M.Sc.: She received her B.Sc. from the National University of Ireland, Maynooth in 2000. She received her M.Sc. in 2003 from University College Dublin where she also recently completed her Ph.D. She is a member of the Cognitive Science society. Her interests are in cognitive science, analogical argumentation, geometric proportional analogies and computational linguistics. Prof. Mark T. Keane: He is Chair of Computer Science and Associate Dean of Science at University College Dublin. He is also Director of ICT, at Science Foundation Ireland. Prof. Keane has made significant contributions in the areas of analogy, case-based reasoning and creativity. He has published over 100 publications, including 16 books, that are cited widely. He is co-author of a Cognitive Science textbook, written with Mike Eysenck (University of London) that has been translated into Portuguese, Hungarian, Italian and Chinese and is now entering its fifth edition. Prof. Keane is a fellow of ECCAI (European Co-ordinating Committee on Artificial Intelligence) and received the Special Award for Merit from the Psychology Society of Ireland, for his work on human creativity.