Lessons tagged “knowledge-organization”
6 published lessons with this tag.
Refactoring ideas improves thinking
Restructuring your notes restructures your understanding.
Cross-cutting categories
Sometimes you need to classify the same items along multiple independent dimensions.
Hierarchies are not trees they are lattices
Real knowledge often has items that belong to multiple parent categories. When you force every concept into a single branch of a tree, you destroy information. Lattice structures — where a node can have multiple parents — preserve the multidimensional nature of knowledge. The tree is a special case. The lattice is the general case.
Depth versus breadth in hierarchies
Going deep in one branch versus wide across many branches are different strategies with different costs — and the right choice depends on whether you need resolution or coverage.
Hierarchy refactoring
When your hierarchy becomes awkward restructure it rather than forcing things to fit.
Multiple valid hierarchies for the same data
The same set of items can often be organized in several equally valid hierarchical structures. Each hierarchy foregrounds different relationships and obscures others. No single arrangement is canonical — the right hierarchy depends on what you are trying to see, find, or do. Recognizing this multiplicity is a precondition for deliberate knowledge design.