Additional functionality encapsulated in items
(from P.A.Wozniak, Economics of Learning)
Finally, I would like to note that a knowledge system used for learning may, and usually is employed also for other purposes than acquiring knowledge. These may include archiving and retrieval purposes, literature sourcing for publication references, date stamping for facts that quickly change in time, individual mnemonic clues (i.e. clues related strictly to a particular student’s knowledge or life), domain labels, ordinal numbers for sorting knowledge systems, and many more.
Government budgets change almost as often as governments themselves. Therefore it seems necessary to provide date stamping in the following question:
Q: What proportion of Japan GDP is spent on R&D (1990)?
A: 2.9%
The date in the parentheses has no bearing on the learning process as long as there is only one item in the knowledge system that pertains to Japanese R&D budget. However, it may appear useful in cases when the student deems necessary to update the figure after some time when it becomes exceedingly outdated.
A more extensive stamping can be seen in the example that follows.
There is no rule as to what proportion of sales ends up as profit after taxes. However, global economic analysis makes it possible to establish the approximate figure for an average company. The main problem here is that the final value may strongly depend on the current economic situation of a particular country, as well as on the methods applied in the analysis. In the example below, the item provides the source of information that was used to estimate the net margin of profit.Q: What is the average proportion of sales that ends up as profit after taxes (based on accounting definition of profit)?
A: 4-6% (The Economic Report of the President, February 1988, pp. 352-353)
Obviously, only the figure of profit after taxes is subject to learning. The source specification is provided additionally for archiving purposes or for publication purposes (e.g. in case the student wished to refer to the figure in one of his or her publications).