Towards Demand-Driven On-The-Fly Statistics

A prototype of a question answering (QA) system, called Farseer, for the real-time calculation and dissemination of aggregate statistics is introduced. Using techniques from natural language processing (NLP), machine learning (ML), artificial intelligence (AI) and formal semantics, this framework is capable of correctly interpreting a written request for (aggregate) statistics and subsequently generating appropriate results. It is shown that the framework operates in a way that is independent of a specific statistical domain under consideration, by capturing domain specific information in a knowledge graph that is input to the framework. However, it is also shown that the prototype still has its limitations, lacking statistical disclosure control. Also, searching the knowledge graph is still time-consuming.