•  29
    What Makes an Effective Representation of Information: A Formal Account of Observational Advantages
    with Mateja Jamnik and Atsushi Shimojima
    Journal of Logic, Language and Information 26 (2): 143-177. 2017.
    In order to effectively communicate information, the choice of representation is important. Ideally, a chosen representation will aid readers in making desired inferences. In this paper, we develop the theory of observation: what it means for one statement to be observable from another. Using observability, we give a formal characterization of the observational advantages of one representation of information over another. By considering observational advantages, people will be able to make bette…Read more
  •  24
    Speedith: A Reasoner for Spider Diagrams
    with Matej Urbas and Mateja Jamnik
    Journal of Logic, Language and Information 24 (4): 487-540. 2015.
    In this paper, we introduce Speedith which is an interactive diagrammatic theorem prover for the well-known language of spider diagrams. Speedith provides a way to input spider diagrams, transform them via the diagrammatic inference rules, and prove diagrammatic theorems. Speedith’s inference rules are sound and complete, extending previous research by including all the classical logic connectives. In addition to being a stand-alone proof system, Speedith is also designed as a program that plugs…Read more
  •  21
    Generating readable proofs: A heuristic approach to theorem proving with spider diagrams
    with Jean Flower and Judith Masthoff
    In A. Blackwell, K. Marriott & A. Shimojima (eds.), Diagrammatic Representation and Inference, Springer. pp. 166--181. 2004.
  •  20
    Extension and intension are two ways of indicating the fundamental meaning of a concept. The extent of a concept, C, is the set of objects which correspond to C whereas the intent of C is the collection of attributes that characterise it. Thus, intension denotes the set of objects corresponding to C without naming them individually. Mathematicians switch comfortably between these perspectives but the majority of logical diagrams deal exclusively in extension. Euler diagrams indicate sets using c…Read more
  •  16
    Special issue on Euler and Venn Diagrams: Guest Editors’ introduction
    with Jim Burton
    Journal of Logic, Language and Information 24 (4): 357-359. 2015.
  •  14
    Presence and Absence of Individuals in Diagrammatic Logics: An Empirical Comparison
    with Andrew Blake, Jim Burton, and Anestis Touloumis
    Studia Logica 105 (4): 787-815. 2017.
    The development of diagrammatic logics is strongly motivated by the desire to make formal reasoning accessible to broad audiences. One major research problem, for which surprisingly little progress has been made, is to understand how to choose between semantically equivalent diagrams from the perspective of human cognition. The particular focus of this paper is on choosing between diagrams that represent either the presence or absence of individuals. To understand how to best make this choice, w…Read more
  •  10
    Evaluating Free Rides and Observational Advantages in Set Visualizations
    with Andrew Blake, Peter Rodgers, and Anestis Touloumis
    Journal of Logic, Language and Information 30 (3): 557-600. 2021.
    Free rides and observational advantages occur in visualizations when they reveal facts that must be inferred from an alternative representation. Understanding whether these concepts correspond to cognitive advantages is important: do they facilitate information extraction, saving the ‘deductive cost’ of making inferences? This paper presents the first evaluations of free rides and observational advantages in visualizations of sets compared to text. We found that, for Euler and linear diagrams, f…Read more
  • Diagrammatic Representation and Inference10th International Conference, Diagrams 2018, Edinburgh, UK, June 18-22, 2018, Proceedings (edited book)
    with Peter Chapman, Amirouche Moktefi, Sarah Perez-Kriz, and Francesco Bellucci
    Springer-Verlag. 2018.