Cats and Multi-Faceted Querying
The Locus Classification System (LCS) is a multi-faceted classification system for economics. Cool, right? But what does that mean?
Let's use an example of cats. If cats were assigned multi-faceted barcodes to describe them, we would be able to search for cats by color, mood, or any combination of the two.
Here are my results if we search for orange cats...
The results for sleepy cat are as follows...
And if we wanted to search for a sleepy orange cat, well voilá, I have found my perfect kitten.
This is similar to how Locus barcodes work. They enable users to pivot their query based on different attributes. For a simple example, we can focus on the product of a company. With multi-faceted barcodes, the user can search by the product or the user can specifically break down the product and query specifically by activity and the resource object associated with it.
The maps below will let you explore the distribution of businesses around subway stations in NYC by activity, resource object, and then the two put together. Don't know where to start? Try reading the first article in the series here.