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IRList Digest Volume 2 Number 25
IRList Digest Sunday, 25 May 1986 Volume 2 : Issue 25
Today's Topics:
Query - Computer Tech. & Automation product 'Retrieval'?
Discussion - User Models: infer movie enjoyment
Abstract - Thesis Proposal on IR by Text Skimming: FERRET
Announcement - Workshop on Intelligent Interfaces
Announcement - Computers & Music Research mtg (incl. discussion on IR)
CSLI - Why Language Isn't Information
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 23 May 86 06:49:28 edt
From: SUEARNOLD@TI-EG.CSNET
Subject: Retrieval, a Computer Technology & Automation (CTA) product
I am interested in any available information concerning the Computer
Technology & Automation (CTA) organization and one of its products
named 'Retrieval'. I believe that CTA is located in Vienna, Austria.
It is my understanding that Retrieval is an information retrieval system
for both data and text documents which uses 'Oracle' (a relational DBMS
product from Oracle Corp. Menlo Park, CA) as the underlying support system.
Retrieval runs under both VMS and MicroVMS.
Any information would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Susan Arnold
Texas Instruments, Inc.
P.O. Box 869305 M/S 8435
Plano, TX 75086
(214)575-3510
CSNET: suearnold%ti-eg.csnet@csnet-relay
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 23 May 86 06:49:19 edt
From: LAWS@SRI-AI.ARPA
Subject: User Modeling
> Date: Wed, 14 May 86 01:09:59 edt
> From: ben@MIMSY.UMD.EDU
>
> USER MODELS AND THE AUTOMATIC SELECTION OF ARTICLES
> FOR AN ELECTRONIC NEWSPAPER
> Bob Allen, Bell Communications Research
> 445 South Street, Morristown, NJ 07960
>
> The potential for automatic modelling of people's prefer-
> ences for news stories was examined in several experiments.
> ...
Some similar work is being done by Peter Cheeseman at NASA-Ames
(Cheeseman%PLU@AMES-IO). He is starting with a list of movie
ratings by a set of people and is trying to infer automatically
which additional movies each person is likely to enjoy. (No
other information is available about either the movies or the
people, although demographic and other information could be
integrated without trouble and should improve performance
considerably.) This could be approached as a cluster-analysis
problem, but Peter is working on maximum-entropy and information-
theoretic approaches that give prababilistic estimates for the
enjoyment of each movie by each person.
-- Ken Laws
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 22 May 86 06:41:12 edt
From: LAWS@SRI-AI.ARPA
Subject: Thesis Proposal
What: Thesis Proposal: Information Retrieval By Text Skimming
Who: Michael L. Mauldin
When: May 29, 1986 At 3pm
Where: In Wean Hall 5409
Two copies of the proposal will appear in the lounge on Thursday; advance
copies may be obtained by contacting me by mail (mlm@cad) or by finding me
in my office (8105 WeH, x3065).
ABSTRACT
Most information retrieval systems today are word based. But simple word
searches and frequency distributions do not provide these systems with an
understanding of their texts. Full natural language parsers are capable of
deep understanding within limited domains, but are too brittle and slow for
general information retrieval.
The proposed dissertation attempts to bridge this gap by using a text skimming
parser as the basis for an information retrieval system that partially
understands the texts stored in it. The objective is to develop a system
capable of retrieving a significantly greater fraction of relevant documents
than is possible with a keyword based approach, without retrieving a larger
fraction of irrelevant documents. As part of my dissertation, I will
implement a full-text information retrieval system called FERRET (Flexible
Expert Retrieval of Relevant English Texts). FERRET will provide information
retrieval for the UseNet News system, a collection of 247 news groups covering
a wide variety of topics. Initially FERRET will cover NET.ASTRO, the
Astronomy news group, and part of my investigation will be to demonstrate the
addition of new domains with only minimal hand coding of domain knowledge.
FERRET will acquire the details of a domain automatically using a script
learning component.
FERRET will consist of a text skimming parser (based on DeJong's FRUMP
program), a case frame matcher that compares the parse of the user's query
with the parses of each text stored in the retrieval system, and a user
interface. The parser relies on two knowledge sources for its operation: the
sketchy script database, which encodes domain knowledge, and the lexicon. The
lexicon from FRUMP will be extended both by hand and automatically with syntax
and synonym information from an on-line English dictionary. The script
database from FRUMP will be extended both by hand and automatically by a
learning component that generates new scripts based on texts that have been
parsed. The learning component will evaluate the new scripts using feedback
from the user, and retain the best performers for future use.
The resulting information retrieval system will be evaluated by determining
its performance on queries of the UseNet database, both in terms of relevant
texts not retrieved and irrelevant texts that are retrieved. Over six million
characters appear on UseNet each week, so there should be enough data to study
performance on a large database.
The main contribution of the work will be a demonstration that a text skimming
retrieval system can make distinctions based on semantic roles and information
that word based systems cannot make. The script learning and dictionary
access are new capabilities that will be widely useful in other natural
language applications.
------------------------------
Date: 9 May 86 1819-EDT
From: Dave Steiner (The Moderator) <WorkS-Request@Red.Rutgers.Edu>
Subject: WORKS Digest V6 #16 [Extract - Ed]
Today's Topics:
...
Announcement - Workshop on Intelligent Interfaces at AAAI-86
...
Date: 6 May 1986 12:15-PDT
Subject: Workshop on Intelligent Interfaces at AAAI-86
From: Neches@isi-vaxa.arpa (Robert Neches)
A workshop on Intelligent Interfaces is scheduled to be held on
Thursday, August 13th, as part of the AAAI conference in
Philadelphia. We would like to bring the call for abstracts to your
attention, and would appreciate it if you would circulate it to
anyone else who might find it of interest.
-- Tom Kaczmarek (Kaczmarek@USC-ISIB.arpa)
Bob Neches (Neches@ISI-Vaxa.arpa)
Workshop Co-chairs.
USC / Information Sciences Institute
4676 Admiralty Way
Marina del Rey, CA 90292
(213) 822-1511
Questions may be addressed to either chairman; abstracts should be
sent to Tom Kaczmarek by June 15. The complete call for abstracts
follows.
*********************************************************************
WORKSHOP ON INTELLIGENT INTERFACES AT AAAI-86
Many AI techniques are applicable to building better human-machine
interfaces. The purpose of this workshop is to investigate
intelligent interface techniques that can potentially span many
interaction modalities. The workshop will discuss interfaces to
knowledge-based systems as well conventional interactive systems.
Past work in this area has been directed at using AI to provide
either an "intelligent apprentice" or a collection of "power tools."
The intelligent apprentice emphasizes assistance based on an
understanding of the user's intentions and task domain. The power
tool approach emphasizes a powerful command set, but leaves the
responsibility for selecting and applying commands in the hands of
the user. This workshop is concerned not just with the extremes of
this dichotomy, but also with work that shows how to blend the two
approaches effectively. Work on specific media and modalities,
(e.g., natural language text or speech understanding) is also
relevant in that it can provide abstractions of understanding and
generation that will be potentailly useful across a wide range of
interface media and modalities.
Topics to be discussed:
What are the fundamental interface problems that AI can help
solve?
What specific AI techniques can be useful in solving these
problems?
What abstractions of "understanding" and "generation" can
come from work on natural language text and speech?
What are the possibilities for symbiotic relationships
between intelligent interfaces and intelligent
systems?
What does it take to create intelligent interfaces to
conventional interactive systems?
Are the power tools and intelligent assistance approaches at
odds with one another? Are middle-of-the-road
approaches motivated by pragmatism or principle?
Organizers: The workshop organizers are Thomas Kaczmarek, Larry
Miller, Robert Neches and Norman Sondheimer of the USC/Information
Sciences Institute.
Participation: The workshop will run for a full day on Thursday,
August 13 at the University of Pennsylvania. The format will be a
combination of short informal presentations and open discussions with
the former being used to stimulate the latter. These will be
organized in four sessions, the topics of which will be finalized
after reviewing the declared interests of participants. Attendence
will be by invitation only; there will be a maximum of 50
participants. Those wishing to participate should submit four copies
of a 1000-word abstract describing either their work building
intelligent interfaces or a position on a topic relevant to the goals
of the workshop. Abstracts should provide contact information at the
top, as they will be duplicated and distributed to the other workshop
attendees. Participants with a willingness to make a short
presentation (15-30 minutes) about either their research or a
position on a relevant topic should indicate this desire in a cover
letter sent with the abstract. If multiple members of a research
group would like to attend, please indicate the number involved in
the cover letter also. Abstracts should be sent to Thomas Kaczmarek,
USC/ISI, 4676 Admiralty Way, Marina del Rey, CA. 90292-6695. They
may also be transmitted electronically to Kaczmarek@USC-ISIB.arpa.
The deadline for submission of abstracts is June 15, 1986.
Invitations will be issued by July 15.
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 23 May 86 06:49:58 edt
From: sdpage%sevax.prg.oxford.ac.uk%sevax.prg.oxford.ac.uk@CS.UCL.AC.UK
Subject: Computers and Music Research: meeting announcement
----------------------------------------
| COMPUTERS AND MUSIC RESEARCH |
| |
| A two-day set of talks and discussions |
----------------------------------------
Date: 9th-10th July 1986
Venue: Computing Laboratory
University of Oxford
England
Computers are playing an increasingly important role in music research.
There are a number of important projects being developed in this country
and abroad---but researchers have been working in isolation and lack a
suitable forum to exchange ideas. This two-day meeting will involve some
of the key people in the field, and will offer an opportunity to discuss
the major common problems and needs.
Subjects to be covered will include input and representation systems,
database structures for music information retrieval, query languages,
general-purpose and specific tools for musicology and music analysis,
methods of printing music by computer, and computers in tertiary music
education.
This event is not a tutorial on the use of computers, and it is
recommended that all participants be computer users. All registering
participants will be invited to write a short paragraph on their current
work. A select few will then be asked to give ten-minute presentations
about their research.
Participants will include Ian Bent (Nottingham), Clive Broadbent
(Durham), Alan Marsden (Lancaster), Stephen Page (Oxford), Alastair
Pearce (London) and Richard Vendome (OUP). Bruce McLean, the database
programmer for The DARMS Project, will be coming from California.
For more information, or to register as a participant, please contact
Stephen Page, New College, Oxford OX1 3BN, UK (phone 0865-251609)
or mail to sdpage%uk.ac.oxford.prg (in the UK, via JANET)
or sdpage%prg.oxford.ac.uk@cs.ucl.ac.uk (via ARPANET)
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 22 May 86 06:41:17 edt
From: JAMIE@SU-CSLI.ARPA
Subject: Calendar, May 22, No. 17 [Extract - Ed]
CSLI ACTIVITIES FOR NEXT THURSDAY, May 29, 1986
NEXT WEEK'S SEMINAR
Why Language isn't Information
Terry Winograd (Winograd@csli)
In developing theories of language, researchers introduce formal
objects corresponding to meanings and try to develop rules relating
those objects. These rules may be more or less sophisticated in
taking into account context, utterance situation, etc., but they all
ground their account of linguistic meaning in terms of something that
lies ouside of language, whether it be truth conditions, possible
worlds, situations, or ``concepts''.
This seems to work well enough when dealing with simple
descriptions of perceived physical reality (``The cat is on the mat'',
``Snow is white'', etc.) but is far more difficult and less convincing
when applied to more realistic examples of languge use, either from
casual conversation (``You aren't kidding, are you?'' or from text
like this abstract.
I will argue that in basing theories of meaning on an articulation
of ``objects,'' ``properties'', etc. we never escape the domain of
language, and are really articulating the possible moves in a kind of
conversation. Much of the technical work done in semantics and
philosophy of language can be reinterpreted in this light, but it
leads to radically different overall obejctives and different
expectations about the potential for building computer programs that
could legitimately be said to ``understand'' or ``mean what they
say''.
The talk is based on parts of a book I have recently completed with
Fernando Flores, entitled Understanding Computers and Cognition, and
on discussions in the Representation and Reasoning group.
------------------------------
END OF IRList Digest
********************
