Training dynamics of neural language models

Why do artificial neural networks model language so well? We claim that in order to answer this question and understand the biases that lead to such high performing language models---and all models that handle language---we must analyze the training process. For decades, linguists have used the tools of developmental linguistics to study human bias towards linguistic structure. Similarly, we wish to consider a neural network's training dynamics, i.e., the analysis of training in practice and the study of why our optimization methods work when applied. This framing shows us how structural patterns and linguistic properties are gradually built up, revealing more about why LSTM models learn so effectively on language data. To explore these questions, we might be tempted to appropriate methods from developmental linguistics, but we do not wish to make cognitive claims, so we avoid analogizing between human and artificial language learners. We instead use mathematical tools designed for investigating language model training dynamics. These tools can take advantage of crucial differences between child development and model training: we have access to activations, weights, and gradients in a learning model, and can manipulate learning behavior directly or by perturbing inputs. While most research in training dynamics has focused on vision tasks, language offers direct annotation of its well-documented and intuitive latent hierarchical structures (e.g., syntax and semantics) and is therefore an ideal domain for exploring the effect of training dynamics on the representation of such structure. Focusing on LSTM models, we investigate the natural sparsity of gradients and activations, finding that word representations are focused on just a few neurons late in training. Similarity analysis reveals how word embeddings learned for different tasks are highly similar at the beginning of training, but gradually become task-specific. Using synthetic data and measuring feature interactions, we also discover that hierarchical representations in LSTMs may be a result of their learning strategy: they tend to build new trees out of familiar phrases, by mingling together the meaning of constituents so they depend on each other. These discoveries constitute just a few possible explanations for how LSTMs learn generalized language representations, with further theories on more architectures to be uncovered by the growing field of NLP training dynamics

CLADAG 2021 BOOK OF ABSTRACTS AND SHORT PAPERS

The book collects the short papers presented at the 13th Scientific Meeting of the Classification and Data Analysis Group (CLADAG) of the Italian Statistical Society (SIS). The meeting has been organized by the Department of Statistics, Computer Science and Applications of the University of Florence, under the auspices of the Italian Statistical Society and the International Federation of Classification Societies (IFCS). CLADAG is a member of the IFCS, a federation of national, regional, and linguistically-based classification societies. It is a non-profit, non-political scientific organization, whose aims are to further classification research

Using data mining to repurpose German language corpora. An evaluation of data-driven analysis methods for corpus linguistics

A growing number of studies report interesting insights gained from existing data resources. Among those, there are analyses on textual data, giving reason to consider such methods for linguistics as well. However, the field of corpus linguistics usually works with purposefully collected, representative language samples that aim to answer only a limited set of research questions. This thesis aims to shed some light on the potentials of data-driven analysis based on machine learning and predictive modelling for corpus linguistic studies, investigating the possibility to repurpose existing German language corpora for linguistic inquiry by using methodologies developed for data science and computational linguistics. The study focuses on predictive modelling and machine-learning-based data mining and gives a detailed overview and evaluation of currently popular strategies and methods for analysing corpora with computational methods. After the thesis introduces strategies and methods that have already been used on language data, discusses how they can assist corpus linguistic analysis and refers to available toolkits and software as well as to state-of-the-art research and further references, the introduced methodological toolset is applied in two differently shaped corpus studies that utilize readily available corpora for German. The first study explores linguistic correlates of holistic text quality ratings on student essays, while the second deals with age-related language features in computer-mediated communication and interprets age prediction models to answer a set of research questions that are based on previous research in the field. While both studies give linguistic insights that integrate into the current understanding of the investigated phenomena in German language, they systematically test the methodological toolset introduced beforehand, allowing a detailed discussion of added values and remaining challenges of machine-learning-based data mining methods in corpus at the end of the thesis

Reinforcement Learning

Brains rule the world, and brain-like computation is increasingly used in computers and electronic devices. Brain-like computation is about processing and interpreting data or directly putting forward and performing actions. Learning is a very important aspect. This book is on reinforcement learning which involves performing actions to achieve a goal. The first 11 chapters of this book describe and extend the scope of reinforcement learning. The remaining 11 chapters show that there is already wide usage in numerous fields. Reinforcement learning can tackle control tasks that are too complex for traditional, hand-designed, non-learning controllers. As learning computers can deal with technical complexities, the tasks of human operators remain to specify goals on increasingly higher levels. This book shows that reinforcement learning is a very dynamic area in terms of theory and applications and it shall stimulate and encourage new research in this field

Fundamental Approaches to Software Engineering

This open access book constitutes the proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Fundamental Approaches to Software Engineering, FASE 2021, which took place during March 27–April 1, 2021, and was held as part of the Joint Conferences on Theory and Practice of Software, ETAPS 2021. The conference was planned to take place in Luxembourg but changed to an online format due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The 16 full papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 52 submissions. The book also contains 4 Test-Comp contributions