Supervised Random Walks: Predicting and Recommending Links in Social Networks

Predicting the occurrence of links is a fundamental problem in networks. In the link prediction problem we are given a snapshot of a network and would like to infer which interactions among existing members are likely to occur in the near future or which existing interactions are we missing. Although this problem has been extensively studied, the challenge of how to effectively combine the information from the network structure with rich node and edge attribute data remains largely open. We develop an algorithm based on Supervised Random Walks that naturally combines the information from the network structure with node and edge level attributes. We achieve this by using these attributes to guide a random walk on the graph. We formulate a supervised learning task where the goal is to learn a function that assigns strengths to edges in the network such that a random walker is more likely to visit the nodes to which new links will be created in the future. We develop an efficient training algorithm to directly learn the edge strength estimation function. Our experiments on the Facebook social graph and large collaboration networks show that our approach outperforms state-of-the-art unsupervised approaches as well as approaches that are based on feature extraction

A changing landscape: the mortgagee's power of sale in Queensland

In Australia, the extent of a mortgagee’s duty when exercising power of sale has long been the subject of conjecture. With the advent of the global financial crisis in the latter part of 2008, there has been some concern to ensure that the interests of mortgagors are adequately protected. In Queensland, concern of this type resulted in the enactment of the Property Law (Mortgagor Protection) Amendment Act 2008 (Qld). This amending legislation operates to both extend and strengthen the operation of s 85 of the Property Law Act 1974 (Qld) which regulates the mortgagee’s power of sale in Queensland. This article examines the impact of this amending legislation which was hastily introduced and passed by the Queensland Parliament without consultation and which introduces a level of prescription in relation to a sale under a prescribed mortgage which is without precedent elsewhere in Australia

Graph cluster randomization: network exposure to multiple universes

A/B testing is a standard approach for evaluating the effect of online experiments; the goal is to estimate the `average treatment effect' of a new feature or condition by exposing a sample of the overall population to it. A drawback with A/B testing is that it is poorly suited for experiments involving social interference, when the treatment of individuals spills over to neighboring individuals along an underlying social network. In this work, we propose a novel methodology using graph clustering to analyze average treatment effects under social interference. To begin, we characterize graph-theoretic conditions under which individuals can be considered to be `network exposed' to an experiment. We then show how graph cluster randomization admits an efficient exact algorithm to compute the probabilities for each vertex being network exposed under several of these exposure conditions. Using these probabilities as inverse weights, a Horvitz-Thompson estimator can then provide an effect estimate that is unbiased, provided that the exposure model has been properly specified. Given an estimator that is unbiased, we focus on minimizing the variance. First, we develop simple sufficient conditions for the variance of the estimator to be asymptotically small in n, the size of the graph. However, for general randomization schemes, this variance can be lower bounded by an exponential function of the degrees of a graph. In contrast, we show that if a graph satisfies a restricted-growth condition on the growth rate of neighborhoods, then there exists a natural clustering algorithm, based on vertex neighborhoods, for which the variance of the estimator can be upper bounded by a linear function of the degrees. Thus we show that proper cluster randomization can lead to exponentially lower estimator variance when experimentally measuring average treatment effects under interference.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figure

An Acoustic Phonetic Analysis of Northern Minnesota English Vowel Spaces

The dialect of Northern Minnesota English (NMNE) has been acknowledged as a leading suspect in the search for the Minnesota accent. The majority of the commenters who accept the Minnesota accent at the bottom of a Youtube video page (Bartholid 2015: Are You MN Enough?) indicate that if any Minnesotans have this accent, it is probably the residents of Northern Minnesota. Thus, this study begins to reveal just what that particular dialect of Northern Minnesota actually looks like acoustically. Twenty speakers from the queried region were recorded saying the following eleven vowel phonemes three times [i, ɪ, e, ɛ, æ, ɑ, ɔ, o, ʊ, u, ʌ] within an isolated hVd structure. After recordings were imported into Praat, they were spliced, measured, and analyzed under six acoustic correlates: F1, F2, F3, duration, F0, and intensity. The total number of tokens analyzed in this study is 3,960 (20 x 11 x 3 x 6).This acoustic data was then compared with four other English dialects, General American English (Peterson and Barney 1952), Midwest English (Hillenbrand, Getty, Clark, and Wheeler 1995), Central Minnesota English (Koffi 2017b; 2016c; 2014; 2013), and Winnipeg Canadian English (Hagiwara 2006). What has been exposed thus far is that NMNE men are most similar to men who speak Winnipeg Canadian English (WCE) although there are some inconsistencies. However, these conclusions are not reflective in the women’s speech. NMNE women are actually more similar to their southern neighbors, whom are the women who speak Central Minnesota English (CMNE)

What do Renters Want: Renter Priorities and Neighborhood Organizations’ Ability to Address those Issues

The purpose of this capstone paper is to engage the rental population in two Minneapolis neighborhoods and get renter resident feedback on issues of local concern, and potential programs that a neighborhood organization could offer to ameliorate those issues. The study consisted of surveys collected from tenants and property owners in two neighborhoods in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The results of these surveys will help to guide the development of future neighborhood organization programming targeted towards the benefit of the rental population

Ethics and Attachment : How We Make Moral Judgment

Book review. Reviewed work: Ethics and Attachment: How We Make Moral Judgment / Aner Govrin. - Abingdon : Routledge, 2019.Non peer reviewe

An Acoustic Phonetic Analysis of Northern Minnesota English Vowel Spaces

The dialect of Northern Minnesota English (NMNE) has been acknowledged as a leading suspect in the search for the Minnesota accent. Bartholdi (2015) produced a video, asking Minnesotans: “Are You MN Enough”? The majority of those who responded associated the Minnesota accent in the video with Northern Minnesota. This study seeks to reveal just what that particular dialect of Northern Minnesota actually looks like acoustically. Twenty speakers from the queried region were recorded saying the following eleven vowel phonemes three times [i, ɪ, e, ɛ, æ, ɑ, ɔ, o, ʊ, u, ʌ] within an isolated hVd structure. The recordings were imported into Praat, spliced, measured, and analyzed for six acoustic correlates: F1, F2, F3, duration, F0, and intensity. The total number of tokens analyzed in this study is 3,960 (20 x 11 x 3 x 6). Some of the main characteristics of NMNE are the following: the merger of the “lot” [ɑ] and “cloth” [ɔ] vowels, the reversal of positions of the “kit” [ɪ] and “face” [e] vowels, and the fronting and lowering of the “foot” [ʊ] vowel.[1] [1] The labeling of vowels follows J.C. Well’s lexical set, as used and explained in Ladefoged and Johnson (2015:102-103)

Hollingworth, Miles: Ludwig Wittgenstein

Book review. Reviewed book: Hollingworth, Miles: Ludwig Wittgenstein. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. ISBN-13 : 978-0190873998 ; ISBN-10 : 019087399X.Non peer reviewe

Executive coaching and personal brand: coach training, coach mastery, and client satisfaction

This project aimed to: (a) account for a method by which executive coaches may be trained in personal brand coaching, (b) describe the executive coaches\u27 abilities to coach in particular personal brand matters pretest, posttest and posttest, and (c) assess levels of client satisfaction based upon receipt of personal brand coaching throughout a 3 month period. Thus, this grounded theory and phenomenological study sought to deduce a training process that can be used to train coaches on how to coach employing personal brand. Furthermore, the study deduced the abilities of these coaches in specific areas of personal brand coaching per training literature on learning and behavioral changes. Finally, satisfaction levels of clients before and after the receipt of personal brand coaching was assessed. Participants were a personal brand expert, 6 executive coaches, and 5 clients. The study concluded there is a process by which coaches can be trained in personal brand coaching. However, it varies depending upon the personal brand expert who facilitates it. That is, the content will vary depending upon the facilitator. Additionally, learning occurred for the coaches as evidenced by pretest, posttest and post-posttest data. Furthermore, limited behavioral changes occurred as demonstrated through post-posttest data. Finally, satisfaction levels in the domains of work and life improved for clients as evidenced by pretest and posttest data. The study has limitations. One is that the training program was facilitated by a personal brand expert who had a certain approach to personal brand that may differ from others. Therefore, the training content may differ if facilitated by another personal brand expert. Additionally, the small sample size of coaches and clients was a limitation making it difficult to generalize the findings. Furthermore, the clients received personal brand coaching therefore their experience may not be generalized to other kinds of coaching. Future research may include the use of a control group, coaches who specialize in career transition coaching along with clients who are in-between jobs, a personal brand expert who has a different approach to the subject, and a focus upon client goal attainment rather than satisfaction

Computational Aspects of Reordering Plans

This article studies the problem of modifying the action ordering of a plan in order to optimise the plan according to various criteria. One of these criteria is to make a plan less constrained and the other is to minimize its parallel execution time. Three candidate definitions are proposed for the first of these criteria, constituting a sequence of increasing optimality guarantees. Two of these are based on deordering plans, which means that ordering relations may only be removed, not added, while the third one uses reordering, where arbitrary modifications to the ordering are allowed. It is shown that only the weakest one of the three criteria is tractable to achieve, the other two being NP-hard and even difficult to approximate. Similarly, optimising the parallel execution time of a plan is studied both for deordering and reordering of plans. In the general case, both of these computations are NP-hard. However, it is shown that optimal deorderings can be computed in polynomial time for a class of planning languages based on the notions of producers, consumers and threats, which includes most of the commonly used planning languages. Computing optimal reorderings can potentially lead to even faster parallel executions, but this problem remains NP-hard and difficult to approximate even under quite severe restrictions