Insights into Analogy Completion from the Biomedical Domain

Analogy completion has been a popular task in recent years for evaluating the semantic properties of word embeddings, but the standard methodology makes a number of assumptions about analogies that do not always hold, either in recent benchmark datasets or when expanding into other domains. Through an analysis of analogies in the biomedical domain, we identify three assumptions: that of a Single Answer for any given analogy, that the pairs involved describe the Same Relationship, and that each pair is Informative with respect to the other. We propose modifying the standard methodology to relax these assumptions by allowing for multiple correct answers, reporting MAP and MRR in addition to accuracy, and using multiple example pairs. We further present BMASS, a novel dataset for evaluating linguistic regularities in biomedical embeddings, and demonstrate that the relationships described in the dataset pose significant semantic challenges to current word embedding methods.Comment: Accepted to BioNLP 2017. (10 pages

Minor League Baseball Is All About Being Entertained

When attending Minor League baseball games many fans are not as interested in the baseball game as they are to the entertainment experience associated with the game.  They are attending the baseball game to be entertained.   Many fans don’t actually watch and completely understand the baseball game; they come for the whole entertainment experience.  They attend to watch the people, eat good food, drink, be around friends, feel a sense of belonging, and to watch the sports contest.  The fans expect to enjoy themselves in a fun, clean, and hassle free environment.  At the end of the game many fans don’t really care who won the game as long as it was fun.  Seventy-six percent of the fans surveyed at the ballpark said they attended the game to be entertained, but do not attend often.  Minor League baseball teams play a 150 game season with 75 home games.  Fifty-nine percent of the fans attend less than five games a season or seven percent of the games of the home games.  Seventy-nine percent of the fans attend less than thirteen percent of the home games.  The fans are not returning to the ballpark often, why?  They may not be having enough fun compared with all the other entertainment choices available.  There is also a limited amount of true baseball fans with only five percent of the fans attending more than half of the home games.  It’s time to start focusing on all those fans of entertainment, providing them opportunity to be entertained at a Minor League baseball game.&nbsp

Black or white: a content analysis of newspaper coverage dealing with NBA players & race

A content analysis of The New York Times and The Washington Post was conducted to determine if there were differences in the coverage devoted to African-American and Caucasian players in the National Basketball Association from July 1, 1999, through June 30, 2000. The study examined 96 randomly chosen articles, 48 from each publication, to determine trends with regard to coverage of each race. While the hypotheses predicted African-American players would receive more negative coverage than their Caucasian counterparts, the results showed that Caucasian players actually receive slightly more negative coverage. The results also showed The New York Times is more positive toward both races than is The Washington Times. The researcher believes that although this study is valid, others need to be conducted to gain a fuller understanding of the topic

The df: A proposed data format standard

A standard is proposed describing a portable format for electronic exchange of data in the physical sciences. Writing scientific data in a standard format has three basic advantages: portability; the ability to use metadata to aid in interpretation of the data (understandability); and reusability. An improperly formulated standard format tends towards four disadvantages: (1) it can be inflexible and fail to allow the user to express his data as needed; (2) reading and writing such datasets can involve high overhead in computing time and storage space; (3) the format may be accessible only on certain machines using certain languages; and (4) under some circumstances it may be uncertain whether a given dataset actually conforms to the standard. A format was designed which enhances these advantages and lessens the disadvantages. The fundamental approach is to allow the user to make her own choices regarding strategic tradeoffs to achieve the performance desired in her local environment. The choices made are encoded in a specific and portable way in a set of records. A fully detailed description and specification of the format is given, and examples are used to illustrate various concepts. Implementation is discussed