Fall 2008 Seminar

 
 
 
       
  Machine Learning Seminar Series
 
 
  Seminar Schedule (Seminar Organizer: Prof. Ziv Bar-Joseph)
 

 

ML/Google Seminars

Machine Learning Lunch Seminar

 

 

Date: December 5, 2008
Time: 12:00 PM - 1:30 PM ()
Location: 1507 Newell-Simon Hall
Speaker: Andrew Arnold PhD Candidate
Title: Exploiting domain and task regularities for robust named entity recognition
Abstract: It is often convenient to make certain assumptions during the learning process. Unfortunately, algorithms built on these assumptions can often break down if the assumptions are not stable between train and test data. Relatedly, we can do better at various tasks (like named entity recognition) by exploiting the richer relationships found in real-world complex systems. By exploiting these kinds of non-conventional regularities we can more easily address problems previously unapproachable, like transfer learning. In the transfer learning setting, the distribution of data is allowed to vary between the training and test domains, that is, the independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) assumption linking train and test examples is severed. Without this link between the train and test data, traditional learning is difficult. In this thesis we propose finding learning techniques that can still succeed even in situations where i.i.d. and other common assumptions are allowed to fail. Specifically, we seek out and exploit regularities in the problems we encounter and document which specific assumptions we can drop and under what circumstances and still be able to complete our learning task. We further investigate different methods for dropping, or relaxing, some of these restrictive assumptions so that we may bring more resources (from unlabeled auxiliary data, to known dependencies and other regularities) to bear on the problem, thus producing both better answers to existing problems, and even being able to begin addressing problems previously unanswerable, such as those in the transfer learning setting. Thus we propose that learned classifiers and extractors can be made more robust to shifts between the train and test data by using data (both labeled and unlabeled) from related domains and tasks, and by exploiting stable regularities and complex relationships between different aspects of that data. We present preliminary results supporting this claim drawn from the problem domain of protein name extraction in biological publications and propose areas of continuing and future investigation.Committee: William W. Cohen (chair), Tom M. Mitchell, Noah A. Smith, ChengXiang Zhai (UIUC). An electronic copy of this proposal is available on-line at: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~aarnold/thesis/aarnold_proposal.pdf