Universal, Unsupervised (Rule-Based), Uncovered Sentiment Analysis

We present a novel unsupervised approach for multilingual sentiment analysis driven by compositional syntax-based rules. On the one hand, we exploit some of the main advantages of unsupervised algorithms: (1) the interpretability of their output, in contrast with most supervised models, which behave as a black box and (2) their robustness across different corpora and domains. On the other hand, by introducing the concept of compositional operations and exploiting syntactic information in the form of universal dependencies, we tackle one of their main drawbacks: their rigidity on data that are structured differently depending on the language concerned. Experiments show an improvement both over existing unsupervised methods, and over state-of-the-art supervised models when evaluating outside their corpus of origin. Experiments also show how the same compositional operations can be shared across languages. The system is available at http://www.grupolys.org/software/UUUSA/Comment: 19 pages, 5 Tables, 6 Figures. This is the authors version of a work that was accepted for publication in Knowledge-Based System

One model, two languages: training bilingual parsers with harmonized treebanks

We introduce an approach to train lexicalized parsers using bilingual corpora obtained by merging harmonized treebanks of different languages, producing parsers that can analyze sentences in either of the learned languages, or even sentences that mix both. We test the approach on the Universal Dependency Treebanks, training with MaltParser and MaltOptimizer. The results show that these bilingual parsers are more than competitive, as most combinations not only preserve accuracy, but some even achieve significant improvements over the corresponding monolingual parsers. Preliminary experiments also show the approach to be promising on texts with code-switching and when more languages are added.Comment: 7 pages, 4 tables, 1 figur

Towards Syntactic Iberian Polarity Classification

Lexicon-based methods using syntactic rules for polarity classification rely on parsers that are dependent on the language and on treebank guidelines. Thus, rules are also dependent and require adaptation, especially in multilingual scenarios. We tackle this challenge in the context of the Iberian Peninsula, releasing the first symbolic syntax-based Iberian system with rules shared across five official languages: Basque, Catalan, Galician, Portuguese and Spanish. The model is made available.Comment: 7 pages, 5 tables. Contribution to the 8th Workshop on Computational Approaches to Subjectivity, Sentiment and Social Media Analysis (WASSA-2017) at EMNLP 201

EL «Ensayo encaminado a resolver un problema en la doctrina del azar»

El trabajo consta de una introducción biográfica en el que se recogen las pocas cosas que se conocen de la vida de Thomas Bayes. A continuación se tratan los antecedentes del problema de la probabilidad inversa y se comenta el Ensayo. Se recogen también tres aplicaciones añadidas al trabajo original de Thomas Bayes por Richard Price. Se incluyen las opiniones que el Ensayo ha suscitado a algunos eminentes estadísticos. [ABSTRACT] This work starts with a biographical introduction inc1uding a few things known of Thomas Bayes life. It is followed by the background to the inverse probability problem and the comments about the Essay. Three applications added to the original job of Thomas Bayes by Richard Price are included. Several opinions about the Essay given by some scientific figures are embodied at the end of the paper

Performance and ownership in the governance of urban water

In this paper the differences in terms of performance between public and the private governance in urban water management are investigated. A statistical ranking is implemented to determine programmatic efficiency differences in DEA, using an incomplete panel data that gathers information on 20 water utilities in Andalusia, in Southern Spain. In the model, labour and operational costs are considered as inputs. The volume of revenue water, the number of connections and the network length are used as outputs. The analysis indicates that private management is more efficient. The efficiency indicators adjusted by a variable related to quality are estimated and demonstrate that privatization of the service does not mean any loss in terms of quality. However, there are no significant differences between both types of management including as a desirable input hydraulic yield as a proxy of the degree of network renovation. A lower hydraulic efficiency in private management would suggest that the need to make significant investments could be an important factor when making the decision to privatize the management of the urban water service: Water supply; Management; Local government;

The cyclical trend of local public service governance: evidence from urban water management in Spain

The level of public and private involvement in economic activity in societies has changed over time. One may talk about the existence of a cyclical trend in which the most important periods of public governance are replaced by periods in which private management dominates the situation. This phenomenon may also be observed in local areas. Some authors have pointed out the existence of an alternation in the provision of municipal services, resulting in periods dominated by governance compared to other stages dominated by private management. In order to illustrate this cyclical trend at local level, this paper intends to analyze the evolution of the governance of the Spanish water supply since the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. Recent evidence from the industry suggests the possibility that we may currently be witnessing a further change in the trend.: Local Government, urban water supply, privatization, municipalization

Epsilon contaminated priors in testing point null hypothesis: a procedure to determine the prior probability

In this paper the problem of testing a point null hypothesis from the Bayesian perspective and the relation between this and the classical approach is studied. A procedure to determine the mixed prior distribution is introduced and a justification for this construction based on a measure of discrepancy is given. Then, we compare a lower bound for the posterior probability, when the prior is in the class of -contaminated distributions, of the point null hypothesis with the p-value

El art. 19 del CP ¿entre la inimputabilidad y la abstención de penar?

La falta de claridad del art. 19 del CP produce dudas interpretativas a la hora de responder a la pregunta acerca de si los menores de edad penal son o no responsables penalmente teniendo en cuenta que no se les aplican penas –al menos en sentido formal, como “penas del CP”– pero son responsables con arreglo a la Ley de responsabilidad penal de los menores. La duda se acrecienta cuando se observa que no faltan autores en la doctrina que afi rman la inimputabilidad de los menores o una “peculiar” imputabilidad disminuida, a pesar de lo dispuesto claramente en la ley.Art. 19 of the Spanish Penal Code creates interpretation doubts when answering the question about juvenile criminal responsibility. Minors are not punished with the same type of sanctions as adults, at least in a formal sense, because they are not sentenced to formal penal sanctions. Nevertheless, according to Juvenile criminal responsibility Law, minors are criminally responsible. The interpretation uncertainty is increased by authors that claim for minors’ nonimputation or for a particular diminished imputation, in spite of the law’s clear statement

epsilon-Contaminated priors in contingency tables

An r x s table is used for different approaches to statistical inference. We develop a Bayesian procedure to test simple null hypotheses versus bilateral alternatives in contingency tables. We consider testing equality of proportions of independent multinomial distributions when the common proportions are known. A lower bound of the posterior probabilities of the null hypothesis is calculated with respect to a mixture of a point prior on the null and an epsilon-contaminated prior on the proportions under the alternative. The resulting Bayes tests are compared numerically to Pearson's chi(2) in a number of examples. For the examined examples the lower bound and the p-value can be made close. The obtained results are generalized when the common proportions vector under the null is unknown or has a known functional form

La información litológica mejora los modelos de distribución de especies de plantas basados en datos de baja resolución espacial

The aim of this study was to assess the improvement of plant species distribution models based on coarse-grained occurrence data when adding lithologic data to climatic models. The distributions of 40 woody plant species from continental Spain were modelled. A logistic regression model with climatic predictors was fitted for each species and compared to a second model with climatic and lithologic predictors. Improvements on model likelihood and prediction accuracy on validation subsamples were assessed, as well as the effect of calcicole–calcifuge habit on model improvemenClimatic models had reasonable mean prediction accuracy, but adding lithologic data improved model likelihood in most cases and increased mean prediction accuracy. Therefore, we recommend utilizing lithologic data for species distribution models based on coarse-grained occurrence data. Our data did not support the hypothesis that calcicole–calcifuge habit may explain model improvement when adding lithologic data to climatic models, but further research is needed.El objetivo de este estudio es evaluar la mejora que supone la incorporación de la litología a modelos climáticos de distribución de especies basados en datos de baja resolución espacial. La zona de estudio es la España peninsular. Se ha ajustado un modelo de regresión logística con variables climáticas para cada una de las 40 especies vegetales consideradas y se ha comparado a un segundo modelo con variables climáticas y litológicas. Se ha evaluado la mejora en la verosimilitud y la capacidad predictiva en submuestras de validación, así como el efecto del grado de preferencia de las especies por suelos calcáreos o silíceos en dicha mejora. Los modelos climáticos ofrecen una capacidad predictiva media razonablemente buena, pero la adición de la litología aumenta la verosimilitud del modelo en la mayoría de los casos y la precisión media de las predicciones aumentan significativamente. Se recomienda utilizar información litológica para los modelos de distribución de especies de plantas basados en datos de baja resolución espacial. Con los datos usados no se puede aceptar la hipótesis de que el grado de preferencia de las especies por suelos calcáreos o silíceos explica las diferencias entre especies en la mejora de los modelos debido a la incorporación de información litológica, pero este aspecto debe ser estudiado con más profundidad en futuras investigaciones