Understanding tree: a tool for estimating an individual's understanding of conceptual knowledge

People learn whenever and wherever possible, and whatever they like or encounter–Mathematics, Drama, Art, Languages, Physics, Philosophy, and so on. With the bursting of knowledge, evaluation of one’s understanding of conceptual knowledge becomes increasingly difficult. There are a lot of demands for evaluating one’s understanding of a piece of knowledge, e.g., facilitating personalized recommendations; discovering one’s expertises and deficiencies in a field; recommending topics for a conversation between people with different educational or cultural backgrounds in their first encounter; recommending a learning material to practice a meaningful learning etc. Assessment of understanding of knowledge is conventionally practiced through tests or interviews, but they have some limitations such as low-efficiency and not-comprehensive. We propose a method to estimate one’s understanding of conceptual knowledge, by keeping track of his/her learning activities. It overcomes some limitations of traditional methods, hence complements traditional methods.