I am a (recently) retired prof from Mechanical Engineering in Bath University, UK, although I am a biologist. I have been following up some of the ideas I developed over the past few years, and have been constructing an ontology of biomimetics, comparing biological and technological solutions to biological problems. I am basically trying to define how to recognise useful ideas from biology. To do this I've been using the list of Inventive Principles from TRIZ, and the conflict or contradiction matrix in which these Principles are used to solve problems in a coded fashion. As part of my characterisation of this interface (bio/tech) I need to do some statistical analysis, using PCA, clustering, etc. However, I am running into problems with sampling and preparation of the data. Also, the type of analysis I should be using. Meanwhile I am teaching myself how to use R.
I would really like to speak with someone not too far away from Bath and explain the problems and ideas face-to-face. Alternatively skype would be a good second-best (my skype name is 'bionicjules'). Obviously the first part of such a discussion would be a description of what I am doing. Clues to this reside in a page on Bath University Wiki (http://wiki.bath.ac.uk/display/OOB/) should you wish to have a preliminary look. The ontology available from there is the most recent (updated a few days ago).
Many thanks
Julian Vincent
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