The document discusses using provenance to analyze social machines. It presents provenance templating as a way to standardize provenance capture from social machines. Templates define a provenance graph structure with variable placeholders that can be populated with observed values. Summarizing and applying network analysis to provenance data can provide insights into the behaviors and patterns within social machines. The work is demonstrated through a Pokémon Go simulation and aims to also study citizen science projects on exoplanet discovery.

1. Provenance and Analytics for
Social Machines
Dong Huynh, Luc Moreau,
and David De Roure

2. SOCIAM All-hands – Sep 19, 2017
Provenance as the Foundation for
Analytics of Social Machines
SOCIALMACHINES
INSIGHTS
Provenance Capture Provenance Analytics

3. A Case Study
Ingress location-based AR mobile game by Niantic.
Gameplay involves capturing portals at places of cultural
significance and linking them over geographical areas.
Portals are crowdsourced 24+ million submissions 2012-
2015
Social machine observing Pokémon GO Pixelmon
A highly observed social machine + radar apps
/r/PokemonGO

4. evolve
power up
Collecting
Earning
Teaming
Pokéstop
Backpack Gym
Candy
Stardust
Poké Ball
egg incubator
revive
SOCIAM All-hands – Sep 19, 2017

5. SOCIAM All-hands – Sep 19, 2017
Pokemon Go NetLogo Simulation – David De Roure

6. Provenance Standardization
• PROV: standardised
vocabulary to describe
• flows of data
• processes
• responsibility
• Free tools & libraries
• ProvToolbox (Java)
• ProvPy (Python)
• ProvStore
• ProvValidator
• Book & Tutorials

7. Provenance Templating
b
operation
player_before
use
pokemon_before
use
type:var:operation_type
type: var:player_type
label: var:user_before_label
team: var:team
type: var:pokemon_type
label: var:object_before_label
species: var:species
strength: var:strength
der
player_after
type: var:player_type
label:var:user_after_label
team: var:team
pokemon_after
gender
der
type: var:pokemon_type
label: var:object_after_label
{ "var": {
"operation": [
{ "@id": "game:capture3861" } ],
"operation_type": [
{ "@id": "pgo:PokemonCapture" } ],
"time": [
{ "@value": "3861", "@type": "xsd:int" } ],
"player_before": [
{ "@id": "game:players-43.9" } ],
"player_type": [
{ "@id": "pgo:Player" } ],
"team": [
{ "@id": "pgo:Mystic" } ],
"pokemon_before": [
{ "@id": "game:pokemons-513.0" } ],
"pokemon_type": [
{ "@id": "pgo:PokemonWeak" } ],
"species": [
{ "@value": "142", "@type": "xsd:int" } ],
"strength": [
{ "@value": "57", "@type": "xsd:int" } ],
"player_after": [
{ "@id": "game:players-43.10" } ],
"pokemon_after": [
{ "@id": "game:pokemons-513.1" } ]
},
"context": {
"game": "http://sociam.org/pokemongo-game#",
"pgo": "http://sociam.org/pokemongo#"
}
}
A provenance graph specifying the shape of the
provenance to be generated, with variables (in red)
acting as placeholders for values.
A set of bindings mapping variables (in red) to
values (in blue)
A Declarative Approach to Provenance Creation
SOCIAM All-hands – Sep 19, 2017

8. Provenance Templating: The Architecture
Template(
Expansion(
PROV(
Document(
Bindings(
PROV(
Template(
Applica: on(
Ontology(
Applica: on(
1. Designer specifies template
2. Application logs bindings
3. Template expansion
algorithm generates
provenance
4. Provenance can be
exported in any PROV
compatible format
Design time
Run time
SOCIAM All-hands – Sep 19, 2017

9. Provenance Templating: Expansion details
b
operation
player_before
use
pokemon_before
use
type:var:operation_type
type: var:player_type
label: var:user_before_label
team: var:team
type: var:pokemon_type
label: var:object_before_label
species: var:species
strength: var:strength
der
player_after
type: var:player_type
label:var:user_after_label
team: var:team
pokemon_after
gender
der
type: var:pokemon_type
label: var:object_after_label
3d054c14-b2bd-4857-95ba-65f99e128956
capture3861
players-43.9
use
pokemons-513.0
use
type:pgo:PokemonCapture
type: pgo:Player
team: pgo:Mystic
type: pgo:PokemonWeak
species: 142
strength: 57
players-43.10
gen
der
der
type: pgo:Player
team: pgo:Mystic
pokemons-513.1
gender
der
type:pgo:PokemonWeak
SOCIAM All-hands – Sep 19, 2017
Paper: Luc Moreau, Belfrit Victor Batlajery, Trung Dong Huynh, Danius
Michaelides, and Heather Packer. A templating system to generate
provenance. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 2017.

10. SOCIAM All-hands – Sep 19, 2017

11. Provenance Summarisation
• Essence of Provenance: a
provenance summary should
capture the essence of the
provenance graph that it
summarises.
• Outliers: It should be possible
to detect anomalies or outliers
in a provenance summary
• Conformance: It should be
possible to decide whether a
provenance graph is
compatible, or conformant,
with a provenance summary.
SOCIAM All-hands – Sep 19, 2017
Understanding Provenance at Scale

12. Pokémon GO Provenance Summary
pgo:PokemonNormal_6
pgo:Player-pgo:Instinct_7
pgo:PokemonCapture_1
pgo:BallCollection_2
pgo:PokemonStrong_0 pgo:PokemonWeak_4
pgo:Pokestop_5
pgo:Valor-pgo:Player_3
pgo:Player-pgo:Mystic_8
Original Summary
Nodes 1488 9
Edges 3384 46
• Clear Narrative
• Common Patterns
• Outliers
Paper: Luc Moreau. Aggregation by provenance types: A technique for summarising provenance
graphs. In Graphs as Models 2015 (An ETAPS'15 workshop), Electronic Proceedings in Theoretical
Computer Science, pages 129-144, London, UK, April 2015.

13. pgo:Player-pgo:Mystic_4
pgo:PokemonWeak_2
pgo:PokemonCapture_0
pgo:Pokestop_3
pgo:BallCollection_1
Pokémon GO Team Summaries
SOCIAM All-hands – Sep 19, 2017
pgo:PokemonNormal_5
pgo:Player-pgo:Instinct_6
pgo:PokemonCapture_1
pgo:Pokestop_4
pgo:PokemonStrong_0
pgo:BallCollection_2
pgo:PokemonWeak_3
pgo:BallCollection_2
pgo:Pokestop_4
pgo:Valor-pgo:Player_3
pgo:PokemonCapture_1
pgo:PokemonStrong_0

14. Provenance Network Analytics
SOCIAM All-hands – Sep 19, 2017
Paper: Trung Dong Huynh, Mark Ebden,
Joel Fischer, Stephen Roberts, and Luc
Moreau. Provenance Network Analytics: An
approach to data analytics using data
provenance. In Data Mining and Knowledge
Discovery, (in review).

15. PNA over Provenance Summaries
SOCIAM All-hands – Sep 19, 2017
Initial results on Pokémon GO provenance:
• Identifying correctly Yellow team (100%)
• Cannot distinguish the summaries of Blue and Red

16. Summary
SOCIAM All-hands – Sep 19, 2017
b
operation
player_before
use
pokemon_before
use
type:var:operation_type
type: var:player_type
label: var:user_before_label
team: var:team
type: var:pokemon_type
label: var:object_before_label
species: var:species
strength: var:strength
der
player_after
type: var:player_type
label:var:user_after_label
team: var:team
pokemon_after
gender
der
type: var:pokemon_type
label: var:object_after_label
pgo:PokemonNormal_5
pgo:Player-pgo:Instinct_6
pgo:PokemonCapture_1
pgo:Pokestop_4
pgo:PokemonStrong_0
pgo:BallCollection_2
pgo:PokemonWeak_3
pgo:Player-pgo:Mystic_4
pgo:PokemonWeak_2
pgo:PokemonCapture_0
pgo:Pokestop_3
pgo:BallCollection_1
pgo:BallCollection_2
pgo:Pokestop_4
pgo:Valor-pgo:Player_3
pgo:PokemonCapture_1
pgo:PokemonStrong_0
A Social Machine
Insights
Provenance Templating
Summarisation
Network Analytics

17. Where’s next…
• Pokémon Go
• Extending provenance network
metrics for provenance
summaries
• Enriching the simulator with
more player behaviours
• StarGazing Live Datasets
• Planet 9: 5m classifications
• Exoplanet Explorers: 6m
classifications
• Discovery of a new 4-planet
system
• Data: classifications & forum
interactions
(between contributors &
researchers)
SOCIAM All-hands – Sep 19, 2017
pgo:BallCollection_2
pgo:Pokestop_4
pgo:Valor-pgo:Player_3
pgo:PokemonCapture_1
pgo:PokemonStrong_0
pgo:Player-pgo:Mystic_4
pgo:PokemonWeak_2
pgo:PokemonCapture_0
pgo:Pokestop_3
pgo:BallCollection_1