331 research outputs found
Finding Convincing Arguments Using Scalable Bayesian Preference Learning
We introduce a scalable Bayesian preference learning method for identifying
convincing arguments in the absence of gold-standard rat- ings or rankings. In
contrast to previous work, we avoid the need for separate methods to perform
quality control on training data, predict rankings and perform pairwise
classification. Bayesian approaches are an effective solution when faced with
sparse or noisy training data, but have not previously been used to identify
convincing arguments. One issue is scalability, which we address by developing
a stochastic variational inference method for Gaussian process (GP) preference
learning. We show how our method can be applied to predict argument
convincingness from crowdsourced data, outperforming the previous
state-of-the-art, particularly when trained with small amounts of unreliable
data. We demonstrate how the Bayesian approach enables more effective active
learning, thereby reducing the amount of data required to identify convincing
arguments for new users and domains. While word embeddings are principally used
with neural networks, our results show that word embeddings in combination with
linguistic features also benefit GPs when predicting argument convincingness.Comment: Accepted for publication in TACL. To be presented at ACL 201
A Bayesian Approach for Sequence Tagging with Crowds
Current methods for sequence tagging, a core task in NLP, are data hungry,
which motivates the use of crowdsourcing as a cheap way to obtain labelled
data. However, annotators are often unreliable and current aggregation methods
cannot capture common types of span annotation errors. To address this, we
propose a Bayesian method for aggregating sequence tags that reduces errors by
modelling sequential dependencies between the annotations as well as the
ground-truth labels. By taking a Bayesian approach, we account for uncertainty
in the model due to both annotator errors and the lack of data for modelling
annotators who complete few tasks. We evaluate our model on crowdsourced data
for named entity recognition, information extraction and argument mining,
showing that our sequential model outperforms the previous state of the art. We
also find that our approach can reduce crowdsourcing costs through more
effective active learning, as it better captures uncertainty in the sequence
labels when there are few annotations.Comment: Accepted for EMNLP 201
Towards Abstractive Timeline Summarisation using Preference-based Reinforcement Learning
This paper introduces a novel pipeline for summarising timelines of events
reported by multiple news sources. Transformer-based models for abstractive
summarisation generate coherent and concise summaries of long documents but can
fail to outperform established extractive methods on specialised tasks such as
timeline summarisation (TLS). While extractive summaries are more faithful to
their sources, they may be less readable and contain redundant or unnecessary
information. This paper proposes a preference-based reinforcement learning
(PBRL) method for adapting pretrained abstractive summarisers to TLS, which can
overcome the drawbacks of extractive timeline summaries. We define a compound
reward function that learns from keywords of interest and pairwise preference
labels, which we use to fine-tune a pretrained abstractive summariser via
offline reinforcement learning. We carry out both automated and human
evaluation on three datasets, finding that our method outperforms a comparable
extractive TLS method on two of the three benchmark datasets, and participants
prefer our method's summaries to those of both the extractive TLS method and
the pretrained abstractive model. The method does not require expensive
reference summaries and needs only a small number of preferences to align the
generated summaries with human preferences.Comment: ECAI 202
How young people find out about their family history of Huntington's disease
Family communication about adult-onset hereditary illness can be problematic, leaving some relatives
inadequately informed or ignorant of their risk. Although studies have explored the barriers and facilitators
in family communication about genetic risk, questions remain about when, what, how and indeed
whether to tell relatives. The process of disclosure is also dependent upon the way in which genetic
information is realized and understood by recipients, but research here is limited. Our paper explores
young people’s experiences of finding out about a family history of the hereditary disorder Huntington’s
disease (HD). In-depth interviews explored how and when young people found out, their reactions to
different communication styles and any impact on family relations. We recruited young people through
the North of Scotland regional genetics clinic and the Scottish Huntington’s Association (SHA). Thirtythree
young people (aged 9–28) were interviewed. A qualitative analysis was undertaken which revealed
four types of disclosure experiences: (1) having always been told, (2) gradually told, (3) HD was kept
a secret, or (4) HD as a new diagnosis. In particular, the timing and style of disclosure from relatives, and
one’s stage of awareness, were fundamental in structuring participants’ accounts. This article focuses on
questions of when, how and indeed whether to tell children, and sits within a broader set of research and
practice issues about what professionals and families (should) tell children about parental illness and
genetic risk.Wellcome Trust’s Programme in Biomedical Ethic
Personal Consultation and Contractual Planning in Stimulating Faculty Growth: The Faculty Development Program at Northern Illinois University
The Development of Faculty Development at NIU
Barriers to Development
Conducting the Program
Individual Cases
Faculty Reactions to the Program
Future Development of the Program
Conclusio
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