I am working on an electronic flashcard program. It will offer the
user a collection of "subjects" to study, such as: vocabulary,
history, geography, trivia, etc.

The program has the concept of "physical subjects" and "logical
subjects". A physical subject is a relatively static collection of
itesm in the database. A logical subject is a derivative collection
based on one or more physical subjects and can be quite dynamic. Some
are pre-defined and others are created by the user.

The user will be allowed to filter and/or combine subjects (physical
or logical) to form new (logical) subjects tailored to their needs or
interests. The vocabulary subject, for example, is subdivided several
ways: grade level (K-6, 7-9, 10-12, college), discipline (science,
medicine, politics, technology, etc.), and by tests (SAT, GRE, LSAT,
etc.).

The huigh school

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Damn...hit the wrong key. Sorry. Here's what I meant to post.

I am working on an electronic flashcard program. It will offer the
user a collection of "subjects" to study, such as: vocabulary,
history, geography, trivia, etc.

The program has the concept of "physical subjects" and "logical
subjects". A physical subject is a relatively static collection of
itesm in the database. A logical subject is a derivative collection
based on one or more physical subjects and can be quite dynamic. Some
are pre-defined and others are created by the user.

The user will be allowed to filter and/or combine subjects (physical
or logical) to form new (logical) subjects tailored to their needs or
interests. The vocabulary subject, for example, is subdivided several
ways: grade level (K-6, 7-9, 10-12, college), discipline (science,
medicine, politics, technology, etc.), and by tests (SAT, GRE, LSAT,
etc.).

A high school student might want to study the 10-12 grade words one
day and the SAT words the next. The two logical subjects will inlude
many of the same words. Internally, I want to keep track of usage
statistics by item in physicla subjects, regardless of which or how
many logical subjects it might be associated with.

I am looking for a pair or terms to use in replace "physical subject"
and "logcial subject", which I find too cumbersome. I have 99% decided
that I will use "subject" for "logical subject", because that is the
term that the user will see. "Subject" is natural and user friendly.

The user will have little concept of the underlying physical subjects,
so I can use a less user-friendly term for that. Possible terms I have
considered are:

dataset
topic
module
physical subject

"Dataset" is currently leading, but to me it signifies a subset, which
is not what it is. It's more of a building block, which is why module
is on the list. "Topic" is good, but, again, I see that as a subset of
a subject, not the other way around.

I may end up just using "subject" and "physcial subject".

I would appreciate any comments or suggestions.

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On Jul 16, 11:17 am, LurfysMa <inva... (AT) invalid (DOT) invalid> wrote:
I am not certain I understand, but it sounds like each flash card can
be associated with multiple subjects, but can be pinned to just one
discipline. So, for example, you might study logic and it might have
the subjects of philosophy and mathematics, but it might be pinned to
the discipline of mathematics. If I am understanding this correctly,
then perhaps "subject" and "discipline" would work. Even if I am not
catching on to the question properly, I suspect that "physical
subject" will not resonate with too many people. From the above words,
my preference would be "module". Best wishes. --dawn

On Mon, 16 Jul 2007 18:27:33 -0000, dawn <dawnwolthuis (AT) gmail (DOT) com>
wrote:

Yeah, I don't think my explanation was very good.

Consider vocabulary. I might have a 30,000 word database of words from
grade school through college. Let's say that they are graded 0-16,
where 0 = kindergarten, 1 = first grade, 13 = first year of college,
etc. So far I have one physical subject (vocabulary) and 17 logical
subjects: 0, 1, 2, ..., 16. Let's say the works are further
categorized by certain aptitude tests (SAT, ACT, GRE, LSAT, etc.). Now
I have several more logical subjects, but still only one physical
subject.

The user might see a list like this:

Subjects of Study
+ History
+ Geography
+ Trivia
+ Vocabulary

If the user clikcs on the "+" icon, the subject would expand to show
the sub-subjects:

Subjects of Study
+ History
+ Geography
+ Trivia
- Vocabulary
+ Aptitude tests
+ Grades
+ Subject area

Expanding further, might yield:

Subjects of Study
+ History
+ Geography
+ Trivia
- Vocabulary
- Aptitude tests
- SAT
- ACT
- GRE
- Grades
+ Grade school
+ Middle school
+ High school
+ College
- Subject area
- Nautical
- Medicine
- Technology

All of these are logical subjects. There are only 4 physical subjects
(history, geography, trivia, and vocabulary).

Within the vocabulary set, a word might well be in several logical
subjects.

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