General Questions

• What is INQLE?
• It is software, which runs on a server, and can mine your data, discovering correlations that might exist therein.

• Can a computer really do scientific research?
• Not yet. Current versions of INQLE cannot do scientific research either. Rather, INQLE is a data mining tool. It finds statistical correlations that exist between different things. Future versions of INQLE will automate or simplify most of the steps of doing a complete prospective research study.

• How could INQLE help me?
• Humans are notoriously flawed at making objective conclusions and sound decisions. Present company excluded, of course. INQLE assists in discovering previously unknown correlations. Once you identify something you would like to predict, (like say "my child's emotional state") you could import into INQLE any & all variables which might impact that outcome (like # of hours slept, foods eaten) plus a measure of that outcome. Then, fire up INQLE and see which variables show the strongest association.

• How does INQLE fit into traditional research?
• INQLE assists in the generation of a hypothesis. As INQLE finds correlations that exist, it can discover previously unknown associations. Such associations might be spurious, trivial, or already known. They might also be true discoveries. In this case, the correlation might or might not represent things that are causally related. It would be the job of traditional research to test any hypothesis and to determine causality.

• Will INQLE ever be able to do traditional research?
• Yes! Just as we have modeled the process of data mining by creating the concepts of Samplers and Experimenter Agents executing repeated cycles of experimentation, we intend to model traditional research by programmatically creating the concepts of Cohorts, Data Gatherers, and Study Question.

• What does INQLE stand for?
• Intelligent Network of Querying and Learning Engines

• Isn't that a little lofty?
• We weary at this niggling interrogation.

Questions on Using INQLE

• What am I supposed to do with my INQLE server?
1. Load your data into it.
2. Start the Experimenter Agent, and watch the correlations that it finds.

• OK, how can I get my data into my INQLE server?
• If you have data in a spreadsheet (and who doesn't), just save it as a delimited text format like Comma-Separated Values (CSV), then use INQLE's importer for such delimited text. See "Getting Started Using INQLE" for details on how to use this importer.

• What format of data can be imported into INQLE?
• INQLE can import any spreadsheet of data (from a text-delimited/CSV file) or it can import RDF data.

• What is RDF?
• Resource Description Framework. It is a way of representing data, using 3-part statements:
1. a subject (which has a globally unique identifier ("URI")
2. a predicated (which also has a globally unique URI)
3. an object (which can be a literal value like "7.5" or "Norman Borlaug", or the URI of another RDF subject.

Thus, RDF is a powerful way for representing most any information in a computer-processable way. The "Unique" in URI allows disparate data on a common subject to be linked together. This will enable future versions of INQLE to merge local data with remote data.

• I am importing my data into INQLE. The File Data Importer Wizard asks me for URI of a RDF class of my rows, and URI for each column of my spreadsheet. How can I find out the which URIs to use?
• Good question, because it is important that you use any standard URIs. You can try Swoogle or Freebase. We will add tools to make this selection process easier!