A Stochastic Decoder for Neural Machine Translation

The process of translation is ambiguous, in that there are typically many valid trans- lations for a given sentence. This gives rise to significant variation in parallel cor- pora, however, most current models of machine translation do not account for this variation, instead treating the prob- lem as a deterministic process. To this end, we present a deep generative model of machine translation which incorporates a chain of latent variables, in order to ac- count for local lexical and syntactic varia- tion in parallel corpora. We provide an in- depth analysis of the pitfalls encountered in variational inference for training deep generative models. Experiments on sev- eral different language pairs demonstrate that the model consistently improves over strong baselines.Comment: Accepted at ACL 201

Latent Variable Model for Multi-modal Translation

In this work, we propose to model the interaction between visual and textual features for multi-modal neural machine translation (MMT) through a latent variable model. This latent variable can be seen as a multi-modal stochastic embedding of an image and its description in a foreign language. It is used in a target-language decoder and also to predict image features. Importantly, our model formulation utilises visual and textual inputs during training but does not require that images be available at test time. We show that our latent variable MMT formulation improves considerably over strong baselines, including a multi-task learning approach (Elliott and K\'ad\'ar, 2017) and a conditional variational auto-encoder approach (Toyama et al., 2016). Finally, we show improvements due to (i) predicting image features in addition to only conditioning on them, (ii) imposing a constraint on the minimum amount of information encoded in the latent variable, and (iii) by training on additional target-language image descriptions (i.e. synthetic data).Comment: Paper accepted at ACL 2019. Contains 8 pages (11 including references, 13 including appendix), 6 figure

Fair Knapsack

We study the following multiagent variant of the knapsack problem. We are given a set of items, a set of voters, and a value of the budget; each item is endowed with a cost and each voter assigns to each item a certain value. The goal is to select a subset of items with the total cost not exceeding the budget, in a way that is consistent with the voters' preferences. Since the preferences of the voters over the items can vary significantly, we need a way of aggregating these preferences, in order to select the socially best valid knapsack. We study three approaches to aggregating voters' preferences, which are motivated by the literature on multiwinner elections and fair allocation. This way we introduce the concepts of individually best, diverse, and fair knapsack. We study the computational complexity (including parameterized complexity, and complexity under restricted domains) of the aforementioned multiagent variants of knapsack.Comment: Extended abstract will appear in Proc. of 33rd AAAI 201

Three Cards

I started writing about my childhood baseball cards a little over a decade ago out of desperation. I didn\u27t have a job, any my money was running out, and the novel I purported to be working on was dying of pretentiousness and exhaustion. Writing about baseball cards didn\u27t solve any of those problems. But there was some life in it, at least. Over the years it has grown into a practice of sorts, or maybe it\u27s a hobby, like building ships in bottles, who knows, but either way it seems to help keep me from completely unraveling

Auswärtige Euergesien abhängiger Herrscher zur Zeit des frühen Prinzipats

Wie schon die meisten hellenistischen Könige zeichneten sich auch die römischen Klientelherrscher in der Zeit des frühen Prinzipat durch Stitungen und Spenden an Städte, Gemeinden und Heiligtümer außerhalb ihrer eigenen Herrschatsgebiete aus. Jedoch zeigt eine genauere Analyse der Stitungsempfänger, der Verteilung und Art ihrer Gaben, dass es bei der euergetischen Praxis der Klientelherrscher nicht um eine einfach Imitation oder Fortsetzung überlebter monarchischer Traditionen ging, sondern im Gegenteil die abhängigen Fürsten durch die auswärtigen Stitungen gezielt ihre Einbindung in das Imperium Romanum, ihre enge Beziehung zum Princeps und ihre eigene Stellung in das römische Machtgefüge kommunizierten.Benefactions and donations to cities, communities and sanctuaries outside their own realms were a major instrument of public representation and propaganda for client kings in the early imperial period, emulating the model of most of their Hellenistic predecessors. However, a close analysis of the recipients of the benefactions, their geographical distribution and nature shows that the euergetism of Roman client kings was not simply an imitation or continuation of anachronistic Hellenistic royal practices. Instead, benefactions became an important instrument for the rulers to communicate their integration into the Imperium Romanum, their personal relationship with the Emperor and their own rank in the imperial hierarchy

Vinyl advertisement in the UNI Bookstore windows

At my initial meeting with my client representative we discussed his interest in a perforated vinyl advertisement. We met at the UNI Bookstore so I could see these windows in person. The UNI Bookstore windows are divided into sections by thick bars. There are equalsized divisions vertically while horizontally they are divided into three sections: a large middle section and smaller top and bottom sections. He envisioned perforated vinyl on the middle sections of the windows, possibly all of the north facing windows and half of the east facing ones

Like water taught by thirst

I am interested in the practice of painting as a way to deepen one’s relationship with nature and its many ecosystems. To me, art not only illustrates these experiences of entanglement, but also is a realm for a sensorial engagement that surpasses representation. During my time at RISD, I have learned that painting can act as a generative tool, a therapeutic ritual, a release of energy, and a place to bridge connections to other facets of my life. It is through the conception, envelopment, and evolution of materials and their relationship to an anthropocentric society that I continue to investigate instances of self-reflection, the embedment of matter, and the inherent subjectivity that comes along with being a visual storyteller. I am curious about the parallel relationships of artistic practice to the cultivation of soil and domesticity within the modern world, and how working to create a form of sustainability for myself has become an act of resistance. Through observation, self-reflection, and embodied entanglement, this thesis will consist of essays accompanied by poems, diagrams, and journal entries that interweave my painting practice, my interests outside the studio, and the research informing my work, with an emphasis on the process of painting and a look at kaleidoscopic vision

Between empires and peers : Hasmonean foreign policy under Alexander Jannaeus

During the reign of Alexander Jannaeus (103-76 BCE), Judea underwent a number of signifi cant changes. This article explores one of them: the fundamental shift in foreign policy strategy. This shift becomes most apparent in the king’s decision to not renew the alliance with Rome, which had been a hallmark of Hasmonean foreign policy since the days of Judas Maccabaeus. However, a close analysis of Alexander Jannaeus’ policy regarding other foreign powers demonstrates that the end of the Judean-Roman alliance did not happen in a vacuum. It is shown that under Alexander Jannaeus, the Hasmonean state adopted a different strategy towards imperial powers by focusing on deescalation and ignorance rather than alliances. In contrast, interactions with other rising states in the vicinity, such as the Nabateans and Itureans, increased. This new orientation in foreign policy refl ected changes in Hasmonean identity and self-defi nition; Judea did not need imperial support to maintain its independence anymore but strived to increase its status as a regional power