This paper explores the concept distance of analogies and its correlation with perceived creative value. It analyzes analogies collected on Twitter to categorize them based on source-target concept distance and commonness. A survey finds that analogies with more distant source-target pairs are rated as more creative than closely related pairs. The aim is to understand how analogies influence creative ideation and build computational support for design by analogy. However, questions remain around how this could practically influence idea quality, defining creative value, expanding the classification methodology, and oversimplification of conclusions from the literature.

1. The Creative Value
of Distant Analogies
Ricardo Sosa
Singapore University of Technology and Design
ricardo_sosa@sutd.edu.sg

2. http://www.sutd.edu.sg/idc_projects.aspx
RoboMods: Design Principles for Self-reconfigurable Modular Robots
PartE: Participatory Evaluation for Design with the Developing World

3. - Thank you -

4. This paper: one way to establish the
concept distance of analogies, and its
correlation with the ascription of
creative value

5. source <is like> target <because>
entailment

6. creative value of new analogies: “they
alter the conceptual system and the
perceptions and actions that the system
gives rise to”
Lakoff, G., and Johnson, M. (2003). Metaphors We Live By. University of Chicago Press.

7. : an online
micro-blogging
natural, ongoing massive
ideation process

8. “is/are like”
“es/son como”
“c’est/sont comme”
Twitter account: @CreativeAnalogy

9. Types of analogies

10. entailments
• None: only the source-target mapping is provided (“Bubble wrap is like catnip for people”
@iSpeakComedy)
• Single: one, usually simple, explanation is offered to justify the mapping (“Google is like a
woman because before you can finish a sentence, it’s making suggestions”
@trinomonero)
• Multiple: analogy is explained by more than one shared attribute (“Love is like war: easy
to start, difficult to finish, and impossible to forget” @ItsRealBrent)
• New entailments: a novel reasoning created to account for conventional analogies (“Life
is like a box of chocolates, it doesn't last as long for fat people” @ophies_best)

11. mapping
• Direct relationship: mapping between source and target is directly proportional
(“Love is like a disease: one always ends in bed” @elprota)
• Inverse relationship: source-target mapping includes an inverse or reciprocal
relation (“My father is like Pope Benedict XVI, but without the sainthood, the
Popemobile and the red shoes; he is just jobless” @TheOMGio)
• Incomplete relationship: source-target pairing includes an incomplete or
exceptional relation (“Having a bad cold is like having a bad hangover without the
exhilarating memories” @perlapell)

12. culture
• Wordplay: language-specific figures of speech (“Hip hop is like
scissors, it always loses to Rock” @BrodonRexx)
• Cultural references: involving signifiers specific to a community or
country (“Une FIFA sans music c'est comme Tintin sans Milou”
@OdaiaLcmb)
• Cross-cultural references: involving signifiers from different
communities or countries (“Jack Nicholson es como el Loco Valdez
gringo” @DrTopCat)

13. formulaic
• Double-pair mappings: two verb-noun or noun-noun pairs mapped
(“Arguing with a fool to prove your point is like trying to cool down a
burning coal by fanning it, it'll only get worse” @IbnAther)
• Impossible relationships: mapping used expressly to denote an
impossibility (“Sleeping on Sunday nights is like a giraffe barking, it’s
impossible” @1DTMHUpdate)
• Monotonic relationships: circular mappings (“Dennis Rodman being
an Ambassador for the United States is like having Dennis Rodman as
an Ambassador for the United States” @birbigs)

14. Commonness

15. 1: Sources are far
more convergent
than targets
{Great potential of
target concepts in
creative
analogies}
Source concepts Target concepts
love 67 women 12
life 54 girlfriend 9
women 47 books 7
Twitter 45 penis 7
people 32 babies 6
friends 16 box of chocolates 6
marriage 12 drunks 6
impossible 11 friends 6
relationships 11 Santa Claus 6
friendship 10 boyfriend 5
men 10 cars 5
ex-boyfriend 9 children 5
girlfriend 9 Christmas 5
feelings 7 condoms 5
kiss 7 dogs 5
writing 7 kiss 5
book 6 masturbation 5
Facebook 6 water 5
Google 6 weather 5
happiness 5 bees 4
mobile phone 5 cats 4
success 5 clock 4
advertising 4 Coca-Cola 4
children 4 coffee 4
laws 4 ex-girlfriend 4
Mondays 4 farts 4
opinions 4 films 4
Pope 4 Jesus 4
religion 4 Monopoly 4
St Patrick's Day 4 shoes 4
tweet 4 toilet paper 4
underwear 4
wine 4

16. Type 1:
common
source +
common
target
Type 2:
common
source +
uncommon
target
Type 3:
uncommon
source +
common
target
Type 4:
uncommon
source +
uncommon
target
cut-off line set here to ≥4 mentions
2: Taxonomy by
concept originality

17. Concept distance

18. Lexical structure of WordNet:
is–a
has–part
is–made–of
is–an–attribute–of
http://wordnet.princeton.edu

19. path_length
• vacation/holiday = 1
• run/jog = 0.5
• coffee/tea = 0.333
• milk/water = 0.25
• table/crab = 0.1429
• vocabulary/violin = 0.0667
• zebra/winter = 0.0476
(Creative potential: disambiguation of terms by choosing alternative glosses)

20. path_length distribution
0
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
0.6
0.7
1 11 21 31 41 51 61 71 81 91 101 111 121 131 141 151
(Most within 1 stdev)

21. Survey

22. “Rate the analogies from 1 (not creative) to 5
(extremely creative); the aim is to understand how
people perceive everyday conceptual metaphors
or analogies”

23. 3: Analogies with
closer source-
target concept
pairs are rated
less creative than
distant concept
pairs
Source Target survey path_length
softener conditioner 0.61 0.5
saint_patrick's_day saint_valentine's_day 0.62 0.3333
feet hands 0.7 0.25
women children 0.71 0.2
boss killer 0.78 0.1667
abdomen breasts 0.81 0.1429
sleep die 0.69 0.125
die sleep 0.79 0.125
woman planet 0.71 0.1111
aloe_vera politicians 0.95 0.1111
flu hangover 0.71 0.1
communication oxygen 0.73 0.1
father Pope 0.85 0.1
life karaoke 0.97 0.1
love war 1 0.0909
love santa_claus 0.69 0.0833
documentary blockbuster 0.76 0.0833
courtship murder 0.76 0.0833
life chocolates 0.81 0.0833
love diarrhoea 0.86 0.0833
love water 0.9 0.0833
politics religion 0.91 0.0769
lies snowballs 0.79 0.0714
compliments perfume 0.93 0.0714
love soccer 0.73 0.0667
love crayon 0.89 0.0667
life soap 0.97 0.0667
intelligence underwear 1.1 0.0667
love rain 0.8 0.0625
life ice_cream 0.92 0.0625
love hourglass 0.87 0.0556
life taxi 0.98 0.0556
life bull 0.99 0.0417
(Entailments not considered)

24. This paper: one way to establish the
concept distance of analogies, and its
correlation with the ascription of
creative value

25. Aim: to understand if and how analogies
influence the quality and variety of
creative ideas, and to build
computational support systems that
facilitate Design-by-Analogy

26. - Thank you -

27. FAQs
1. It is not completely clear to me how this could be used to influence the
quality of ideas in ideation
2. A distinction should be made between the judgment of whether an
analogy is creative and the creative value of that analogy
3. I think “creative value” needs to be carefully dissected, and asked about
in context and piece by piece
4. While many of the examples are funny, they are also often a bit offensive
or controversial to one group or another
5. The method needs to be detailed and expanded for all categorization and
classification components in the paper
6. The statement that “distant analogies seem particularly useful for
creativity” seems oversimplified from the literature