[Colloquium] Talks at TTIC: Jordan Boyd-Graber, University of Maryland

[Dawn Ellis]

When:     Thursday, January 16th at 11am

Where:    TTIC, 6045 S Kenwood Avenue, Room #526

Who:       Jordan Boyd-Graber,  University of Maryland

Title:        Big Data Analysis with Topic Models: Human Interaction,
Streaming
               Computation, and Social Science Applications

Abstract:

A common information need is to understand large, unstructured
datasets: millions of e-mails during e-discovery, a decade worth of
science correspondence, or a day’s tweets.  In the last decade, topic
models have become a common tool for navigating such datasets.  This
talk investigates the foundational research that allows successful
tools for these data exploration tasks: how to know when you have an
effective model of the dataset; how to correct bad models; how to
scale to large datasets; and how to detect framing and spin using
these techniques.  After introducing topic models, I argue why
traditional measures of topic model quality---borrowed from machine
learning---are inconsistent with how topic models are actually used.
In response, I describe interactive topic modeling, a technique that
enables users to impart their insights and preferences to models in a
principled, interactive way.  I will then address computational and
statistical limits to existing approaches and how streaming topic
models, with an "infinite vocabulary", can be applied to real-world
online datasets.  Finally, I’ll discuss ongoing collaborations with
political scientists to use these techniques to detect spin and
framing in political and online interactions.

Short Bio:

Jordan Boyd-Graber is an assistant professor in the University of
Maryland's iSchool and the Institute for Advanced Computer Studies.
He is a 2010 graduate of Princeton University, with a PhD thesis on
"Linguistic Extensions of Topic Models", under David Blei.

Photo
http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/~jbg/images/jbg.png

***************************************
Host:  Karen Livescu, klivescu at ttic.edu


-- 
*Dawn Ellis*
Administrative Coordinator,
Bookkeeper
773-834-1757
dellis at ttic.edu

TTIC
6045 S. Kenwood Ave.
Chicago, IL. 60637
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