Patent ID: 7765176

Claim:
A method of displaying information interactively with a knowledge discovery system, the method comprising: deriving a plurality of data elements from a plurality of sources; storing the data elements and relationships between at least some of the data elements in a database; associating at least some of the data elements with geographic information; generating a first view within an interactive view to display a plurality of data element indicia representative of corresponding data elements, a plurality of relationship indicia representative of relationships between at least some of the data elements and a focus data element indicia representative of a first data element selected from among the data elements as a focus of an analysis; generating a second view within the interactive view to display in a geographic context the data element indicia and the focus data element indicia displayed in the first view in a geographic relationship with both related data elements and unrelated data elements; and defining an additional relationship between the first data element and a second data element using one of the first view and the second view, the focus data element indicia, and at least one of the data element indicia; and generating a confidence value of the additional relationship based at least in part on a nearness of the first data element with respect to the second data element, wherein the nearness is determined from a user entered parameter, and is used to determine a degree of reliability of the defined additional relationship.