Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to discuss the results of a customer knowledge study commissioned by the Parliamentary Documentation Centre (PDC) of the European Parliament in order to elicit a better understanding of the views and needs of its actual and potential client base. Design/methodology/approach -The study consisted of in-depth, face-to-face interviews with 72 clients and 11 staff (83 individuals) in Brussels in February 2004. The paper explores the significance of information in the parliamentary context and summarises the activities which respondents described as being information-dependent. The paper also highlights the evolutionary nature of information need during the course of the legislative process. Findings -The information-seeking behaviour and skills of the PDC clients are discussed, as are the criteria by which they assess information quality. The study revealed that users were frequently uncritical and pragmatic in use of the most readily available information, sacrificing quality in favour of ease of access. Originality/value -This paper presents results from a uniquely complex information environment -the European Union. Users tended to be complacent about their information-seeking skills and reluctant to engage in skills enhancement activities.
A (left) quotient of a language L by a word w is the language w −1 L = {x | wx ∈ L}. The quotient complexity of a regular language L is the number of quotients of L; it is equal to the state complexity of L, which is the number of states in a minimal deterministic finite automaton accepting L. An atom of L is an equivalence class of the relation in which two words are equivalent if for each quotient, they either are both in the quotient or both not in it; hence it is a non-empty intersection of complemented and uncomplemented quotients of L. A right (respectively, left and two-sided) ideal is a language L over an alphabet Σ that satisfies L = LΣ * (respectively, L = Σ * L and L = Σ * LΣ * ). We compute the maximal number of atoms and the maximal quotient complexities of atoms of right, left and two-sided regular ideals.
A right ideal (left ideal, two-sided ideal) is a non-empty language $L$ over
an alphabet $\Sigma$ such that $L=L\Sigma^*$ ($L=\Sigma^*L$,
$L=\Sigma^*L\Sigma^*$). Let $k=3$ for right ideals, 4 for left ideals and 5 for
two-sided ideals. We show that there exist sequences ($L_n \mid n \ge k $) of
right, left, and two-sided regular ideals, where $L_n$ has quotient complexity
(state complexity) $n$, such that $L_n$ is most complex in its class under the
following measures of complexity: the size of the syntactic semigroup, the
quotient complexities of the left quotients of $L_n$, the number of atoms
(intersections of complemented and uncomplemented left quotients), the quotient
complexities of the atoms, and the quotient complexities of reversal, star,
product (concatenation), and all binary boolean operations. In that sense,
these ideals are "most complex" languages in their classes, or "universal
witnesses" to the complexity of the various operations.
Comment: 25 pages, 11 figures. To appear in Discrete Mathematics and
Theoretical Computer Science. arXiv admin note: text overlap with
arXiv:1311.4448
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