When I’m explaining something, or when someone is cramming some new thought into my head, I’m frequently impressed by the power of a good analogy. Analogies definitely help explanations, but making up a good analogy on the spot is sometimes troublesome.
A properly constructed database of concepts and their relationships could be used to generate analogies on the fly. I’m sure artificial intelligence wonks have already worked out some form of “reasoning by analogy” system that optimizes concept/object/relationship matches. It would be spiffy to apply said algorithms/databases to the particular goal of enhancing education through analogies.
Hmm… maybe if the True Knowledge system puts out a solid API reasonably soon, someone could piggyback off of it.
That, or a website/application could go the old-fashioned way and just serve as a database for human-generated educational analogies.
