1.12 - Windows - Help with Statement Types Window
What is a Statement Type?
Information in MindModel is stored as nouns and statements.
Nouns are the people, places, things, ideas, etc. that are recorded in a model.
Statements are facts about those nouns.
Statements are composed of subject nouns, verbs, and (usually) object nouns.
A typical MindModel statement would be:
person: John Doe <works for> organization: MindModel Corporation
In this statement, "John Doe" is the subject noun, "works for" is the verb, and "MindModel Corporation" is the object noun.
"Person <works for> organization" is the statement type of that statement.
What good are statement types?
MindModel organizes statements into statement types, to make it easier to find statements based on what they really mean.
If you've used a search engine on the Internet, you're familiar with what we're talking about. You enter a word or phrase, and get back thousands of results, some of which have nothing to do with what you're looking for.
Given that search engines have to work with unstructured text, they do pretty well, but there are times when you need more accurate results. In MindModel, if you search for people who work for IBM, you get exactly those people, no more no less.
Why should I bother using nouns and statements? Why can't I define my own fields?
MindModel is designed to be different than traditional database software, because traditional database software is too difficult for non-programmers to use.
MindModel's goal is to give you the ability to create relational databases without programming.
Although defining fields seems like it would be fun, in fact, adding the ability to define fields would make MindModel an order of magnitude more difficult to use.
If this statement seems like an exaggeration, consider how long it takes to learn to create a truly relational database in Microsoft Access. Access is good software, but it takes months or even years to learn to use it to create relational databases.
Even when you learn to create relational databases the old-fashioned way, it still takes quite a long time to create each new database.
It only takes a few seconds to create a new relational database using MindModel, because the structure of MindModel is already set up for you.
MindModel organizes information into simple, pre-defined categories.
These categories (nouns and statements) closely mirror the way English speakers think, speak, and write. We call the software MindModel because it allows you to create models (databases) of whatever is on your mind.
Show Me the Window
The following picture shows the Help with Statement Types Window:
It's Not as Bad as It Looks
There are over 45,000 statement types in MindModel, to help you express many different types of relationships between nouns. Looking at the list, it seems like an unwieldy number.
In fact, MindModel is designed to make it very easy to work with all the statement types.
When you use the Add/Edit Statement Wizard to add a statement to a model, you begin by choosing a subject noun.
Let's say you've chosen a person, John Doe.
You want to enter a statement about a book that John Doe read.
Once you choose the "books and quotes" verb category, MindModel narrows the list of verbs it presents to a short list of book-related verbs.
Once you choose "read" and the verb, MindModel narrows the list of object noun types (things that get read) to a short list (e.g. book, magazine, newspaper, etc).
So MindModel searches through the large list of statement types, only showing you the ones that are relevant to what you're doing with the software at that time.
Narrowing the List of Statement Types
You can use the three drop-down menus at the top of the Help with Statement Types Window to narrow the list of statement types to those that match your choices.
Sorting the List
You can click on any of the column headers ("Subject Type", "Verb", "Object Type" or "Shortcut") to sort the list by that column.
Printing Statement Types
Click here for information on printing statement types, and using the "only show items which have shortcuts" check box.