Argumentation in Computer Media - Pittsburgh Interest Group
Newsletter - 25 February 1999

Contents:
0. What happened to the 19 Feb 99 version of this newsletter
1. Summary of 11 February 1999 meeting 
2. Next meeting - agenda and date (Thursday March 4)
3. Meeting date/time preference survey
4. Distribution of newsletter, announcements
5. To be added to the mailing list

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0.  What happened to the 19 Feb 99 version of this newsletter

I don't know.

Apparently, some (none?) of you received the version of this that I
mailed on Feb 18, so I am taking the opportunity to resend it with
updated information.  

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1. Summary of 11 February 1999 meeting 

There were 13 participants, affiliated (currently or in the recent
past) with Pitt/LRDC (Education, ISP) and CMU (Computer Science,
Design, English, Education, GSIA, HCI, LTI, and Psychology).

We introduced ourselves and described our interests in argumentation.

Our interests can be described by the following taxonomy:

Producing arguments:
              for decision-making - adversarial vs. non-adversarial
              for scientific explanation ("science" broadly construed)
Representing/analyzing arguments:
              for teaching scientific thinking and mathematics
              for teaching how to write/assess arguments
              for documentation of design choices
Translating arguments (e.g., computer-generated mathematical proofs) 
              into more understandable form

Discussion also touched on the different dimensions of argumentation of
interest to this group:

  Creator: human or machine
  Audience: human or machine
  Participation roles: agent-agent, agent-recepient, or computer-mediated
  Medium: language, graphics
  Evaluation of agent: Trustworthiness
  Evaluation of argument: validity, effectiveness, comprehensibility
  Style/genre/conventions: legal, scientific, etc.	

Future plans:

Several participants volunteered to give presentations on their 
research in argumentation.  I plan to create a web page as a resource 
for the group, including information provided by you such as
bibliographic references and links to related web sites and conferences.

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2. Next meeting

Date:   Thursday March 4 

Time and Location: To be announced soon

Agenda:

Given the wide range of backgrounds and interests, we decided it
would be useful to see concrete examples of arguments from these
different perspectives.  At the next meeting, please bring an example
of an argument to share.  Each volunteer will have 5-10 minutes
(depending on how many of us want to share an example).  An overhead
transparency projector will be provided.  Also, it would be useful
to give an overview of whatever theory of argumentation is behind 
the argument that you share.

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3.  Date/time/preferences:

I will try to take your preferences into consideration when scheduling
future meetings.  Please help me cope with the amount of email this
may generate by standardizing your reply as follows.  Please detach
the following questionnaire and return it to me by email (ascii only)
with your answers or you can give me this information in person at the
next meeting.  Thanks!

   ------- detach survey here ----------------------------------------

   To indicate your preferences for meeting times,
   please please mark the cells of this matrix as:
   very good (++), good (+), ok (-), or other (leave blank).
   The vertical axis indicates day of the week and month, e.g.,
   "Tue Mar" means Tuesdays in March.  The horizontal axis 
   shows meeting time (p.m.).

               4-530  430-6  5-630  530-7
   Tue Mar 
   Wed Mar 
   Thu Mar 
   Tue Apr
   Wed Apr
   Thu Apr
   Tue May
   Wed May
   Thu May
  
   Miscellaneous comments on date/time:

   At a future meeting, I would like to volunteer to give a longer 
   presentation on:

   ---------- end of survey ----------------------------------------

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4. Distribution of newsletter, announcements

Feel free to forward this to colleagues who may be interested.  I have
discontinued sending news of the group to general-purpose local mailing
lists because of complaints that I received.

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5. To be added to the mailing list: 

If someone forwarded this to you and you would like to be added to the
mailing list please send your email address to me:
nancy.green@cs.cmu.edu