# Peter Pirolli **Peter Pirolli** is a Senior Research Scientist at the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC), which he joined in 2017. Before that, he was a Research Fellow at the Palo Alto Research Center (Xerox PARC), where he studied human information interaction, and earlier a professor in the School of Education at UC Berkeley. He earned his PhD in cognitive psychology at Carnegie Mellon University in 1985. His work mixes cognitive science, artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction. He is best known for developing information foraging theory with [[Stuart Card]] at PARC. He wrote the reference book on it: *Information Foraging Theory: Adaptive Interaction with Information* (Oxford University Press, 2007). With Card, he also did influential work on sensemaking, based on how intelligence analysts make sense of large amounts of information. His more recent research covers mobile health (models of healthy habit formation), human-AI teaming and explainable AI. ## Information foraging theory Information foraging theory describes people looking for information the way biologists describe animals looking for food: they weigh what they'll gain against the effort it costs. Pirolli and Card first presented it at CHI in 1995, then published it in *Psychological Review* in 1999. Three of its concepts are worth knowing: - **[[Information scent|Information scent]]**: the cues that tell you whether a path leads to what you want (titles, link labels, snippets). Strong scent, you follow; weak scent, you give up or go elsewhere - **Patches**: clusters of information where you stay for a while before moving on - **Diet**: deciding which items are worth pursuing at all ## Why it matters for PKM The theory maps directly onto a vault. A [[Map of Content (MoC)|Map of Content]] is a patch you build on purpose: the notes about a topic in one place. Folders, tag pages and a Base filtered on a type work as patches too. Titles, link text, aliases and search snippets are your information scent. And claim-style titles help with the diet: you can judge a note without opening it. That's why I care so much about a short line of context next to each link in a MoC. Without it, you have to open every note to know whether it's relevant, and each opened note costs time and attention. Good scent and good patches are a big part of [[Findability|findability]]. ## Recent Activity - ## Insights - People forage for information the way animals forage for food: maximize the gain, minimize the cost - Information scent decides which path you follow and when you give up ## Quotes <!-- QueryToSerialize: LIST FROM #type/quote AND [[]] WHERE public_note = true SORT file.name ASC --> ## Books <!-- QueryToSerialize: LIST FROM #type/book AND [[]] WHERE public_note = true SORT file.name ASC --> ## Media <!-- QueryToSerialize: LIST FROM #type/media AND [[]] WHERE public_note = true SORT file.name ASC --> ## Appears in <!-- QueryToSerialize: LIST FROM #type/media WHERE contains(cast, this.file.name) AND public_note = true SORT release_date DESC --> ## Related - [[Stuart Card]] - [[Information scent]] - [[Findability]] - [[Map of Content (MoC)]] - [[The Complete Guide to Obsidian Search - Find Any Note When You Need It (Article)]] - [[Structure a Findable Obsidian Vault - Folders, Links, Dates and Daily Notes (Article)]] ## References - IHMC profile: https://www.ihmc.us/groups/peter-pirolli/ - Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Pirolli - Pirolli, P., & Card, S. K. (1995). Information foraging in information access environments. *Proceedings of CHI '95*, 51-58. https://doi.org/10.1145/223904.223911 - Pirolli, P., & Card, S. K. (1999). Information foraging. *Psychological Review*, 106(4), 643-675. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.106.4.643 - Pirolli, P. (2007). *Information Foraging Theory: Adaptive Interaction with Information*. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195173321.001.0001