Uncertainty detection in historical databases
Résumé
Historians analyze information from diverse and heterogeneous sources to verify hypotheses and/or to propose new ones. Central to any historical project is the concept of uncertainty, reflecting a lack of confidence. This may limit the scope of the hypotheses formulated. Uncertainty encompasses a variety of aspects including ambiguity, incompleteness, vagueness, randomness, and inconsistency. These aspects cannot be easily detected automatically in plain-text documents. The objective of this article is to propose a process for detecting uncertainty, combining dictionary-based approaches, and pattern identification. The process is validated through experiments conducted on a real historical data set.