Mathematical decomposition of table-structured electronic documents

• US 7,653,871 B2
• Filed: 03/27/2003
• Issued: 01/26/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 03/27/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: General Electric Company
• Original Assignee: General Electric Company
• Inventors: Klein, Eric, Laymon, Marc, LaComb, Christina
• Primary Examiner(s): HUYNH, THU V
• Application Number:
  US10/401,310
• Publication Number:
  US 20040193433A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,497 Days
• Field of Search: 715/227, 715/212, 715/213, 715/218, 715/219, 705/1, 705/35
• US Class Current: 715/227
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/18 of spreadsheets form-filling G06F40/174
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/12 Accounting

Abstract

Systems and methods for automatically decomposing table-structured electronic documents are described. The systems and methods of this invention generally comprise utilizing mathematical relationships, together with textual and positional clues to the mathematical relationships, in a collaborative manner, to derive a mathematical construct of the table-structured document. Embodiments of this invention automatically process a multitude of table-structured documents, thereby eliminating the need for human interaction with such documents in many cases and lowering the costs associated with processing such documents.

Claims

1. A computer method automatically mathematically decomposing a table-structured electronic document comprising multiple tables having predefined mathematical relationships, the method comprising the following steps:

utilizing textual clues and the predefined mathematical relationships between the multiple tables to partition the document into multiple sub-tables;

identifying a value in each of the sub-tables as a grand total by utilizing at least one of positional and textual information;

assigning all line items within each of the sub-tables, except for the grand total for each of the sub-tables, as children of each of the sub-tables, as children of the sub-table;

pre-identifying subtotals within each table by utilizing available textual clues;

pre-identifying a value sign for each value in each table by utilizing available textual clues;

automatically identifying and validating mathematical relationships between children in each of the sub-tables by summing together all line items values within each of the sub-tables, except the grand total value for each of the sub-tables, to create a validation sum, and then subtracting a sum of successively larger sets of line item values from the validation sum until the result thereof equals the grand total value for each of the sub-tables, wherein when the result thereof equals the grand total value for each of the sub-tables, the values in the set of line item values are identified as subtotals of each of the sub-tables.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the table-structured document comprises a balance sheet.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the steps are performed automatically by a computer system.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the document is in the form of at least one of:

an ASCII text document, an EBCDIC text document, a spreadsheet, a PDF file, a Postscript file, and an HTML document.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the electronic document is obtained electronically via at least one of:

the Internet, an electronic mail message, an intranet, an extranet, and a scanner.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the method is utilized to analyze at least one of:

a company'"'"'s financial health and the integrity of the financial statement.