Using weakly supervised learning for text classification

Abstract: Learning to classify text is a problem applicable to many practical settings. Is it possible to improve performance in the classification task with no additional data, for `free'? Weakly supervised learning algorithms such as co-training (Blum & Mitchell, 1998) appear to offer just that. I shall discuss some of the findings in the field, together with my own work in this area.

Co-training in Text Classification: Is the Independence Assumption Always Applicable?

Abstract: In the recent literature, there has been considerable interest in weakly supervised learning algorithms and their application to text categorisation. Blum and Mitchell (1998) use co-training where there are two natural independent views of the data, and Nigam and Ghani (2000) cite this to warrant the independence assumption, where higher performance is gained by there being a highly divided feature set. In a number of empirical experiments, we find that highly divided features are not a necessary condition of high performance in co-training, and that self-training can outperform co-training in a real-world setting where clear feature-split datasets are not available.

Linguistic Imperialism and Singapore's Speak Good English Movement

Abstract: In 2000, the Singapore Government launched the Speak Good English Movement, with the tagline `Speak Well. Be Understood.'; its' aim being to remove some of the characteristic features of Singapore Colloquial English (or Singlish) from common parlance, instead replacing them with `good' English which appears to be close to Standard British English in form. This can be viewed as a kind of linguistic imperialism (Philipson, 1992) in which British English is considered superior to the local variety. An small study was conducted on Singaporean students via the World Wide Web studying in the UK to determine whether they were acting as `linguistic imperialists', bringing British English influences back to Singapore with them.

indoneshia no shyakai no mondaiten (2001)

Now you too can read this fantastic resumé of twentieth century Indonesian politics and its' associated social effects!!