TITLE: Graph-based Semi-Supervised Learning Algorithms for NLP
ABSTRACT
While labeled data is expensive to prepare, ever increasing amounts of
unlabeled linguistic data are becoming widely available. In order to
adapt to this phenomenon, several semi-supervised learning (SSL)
algorithms, which learn from labeled as well as unlabeled data, have
been developed. In a separate line of work, researchers have started
to realize that graphs provide a natural way to represent data in a
variety of domains. Graph-based SSL algorithms, which bring together
these two lines of work, have been shown to outperform the
state-of-the-art in many applications in speech processing, computer
vision and NLP. In particular, recent NLP research has successfully
used graph-based SSL algorithms for PoS tagging, semantic parsing,
knowledge acquisition, sentiment analysis, and text categorization.
Recognizing this promising and emerging area of research, this
tutorial focuses on graph-based SSL algorithms (e.g., label
propagation methods). The tutorial is intended to be a sequel to the
ACL 2008 SSL tutorial, focusing exclusively on graph-based SSL methods
and recent advances in this area, which were beyond the scope of the
previous tutorial.
The tutorial is divided in two parts. In the first part, we will motivate
the need for graph-based SSL methods, introduce some standard graph-based
SSL algorithms, and discuss connections between these approaches. We will
also discuss how linguistic data can be encoded as graphs and show how
graph-based algorithms can be scaled to large amounts of data
(e.g., web-scale data).
Part 2 of the tutorial will focus on how graph-based methods can be
used to solve several critical NLP tasks, including basic problems
such as PoS tagging, semantic parsing, coreference resolution
and more downstream tasks such as text categorization and information
acquisition, and sentiment analysis. We will conclude the tutorial
with some exciting avenues for future work.
Familiarity with semi-supervised learning and graph-based methods will
not be assumed, and the necessary background will be provided.
Examples from NLP tasks will be used throughout the tutorial
to convey the necessary concepts. At the end of this tutorial, the
attendee will walk away with the following:
- An in-depth knowledge of the current state-of-the-art in graph-based SSL algorithms, and the ability to implement them.
- The ability to decide on the suitability of graph-based SSL methods for a problem.
- Familiarity with different NLP tasks where graph-based SSL methods have been successfully applied.
In addition to the above goals, we hope that this tutorial will better
prepare the attendee to conduct exciting research at the intersection
of NLP and other emerging areas with natural graph-structured data
(e.g., Computation Social Science).
Please visit http://graph-ssl.wikidot.com/ for details.
OUTLINE
- Introduction
- Why graph-based SSL methods?
- Graph construction from linguistic data
- Graph-based SSL methods
- Regularization-based methods
- Scaling to large data
- Applications in NLP problems
- PoS Tagging
- Bilingual Projection
- Semantic Parsing
- Text Categorization
- Information Acquisition
- Conclusion
- Open problems
PRESENTERS
Amarnag Subramanya
Google Research
1600 Amphitheater Pkwy.
Mountain View, CA 94043
Email: asubram-AT-google.com
Web: http://sites.google.com/site/amarsubramanya
Amarnag Subramanya is a Senior Research Scientist in Machine Learning
& Natural Language Processing at Google Research. Amarnag received his
PhD (2009) from the University of Washington, Seattle, working under
the supervision of Jeff Bilmes. His research interests include machine
learning and graphical models. In particular he is interested in the
application of semi-supervised learning to large-scale problems in
natural language processing. His dissertation focused on improving the
performance and scalability of graph-based semi-supervised learning
algorithms for problems in natural language, speed and vision. He was
the recipient of the Microsoft Research Graduate fellowship in
2007. He recently co-organized a session on "Semantic Processing" at
the National Academy of Engineering's (NAE) Frontiers of Engineering
(USFOE) conference.
Partha Pratim Talukdar
GHC 8133, Machine Learning Department
Carnegie Mellon University
5000 Forbes Ave., Pittsburgh, PA 15213
Email: partha.talukdar-AT-cs.cmu.edu
Web: http://www.talukdar.net
Partha Pratim Talukdar is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Machine
Learning Department at Carnegie Mellon University, working with Tom
Mitchell on the NELL project. Partha received his PhD (2010) in CIS
from the University of Pennsylvania, working under the supervision of
Fernando Pereira, Zack Ives, and Mark Liberman. Partha is broadly
interested in Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, and Data
Integration, with particular interest in large-scale learning and
inference over graphs. His dissertation introduced novel graph-based
weakly-supervised methods for Information Extraction and Integration.
His past industrial research affiliations include HP Labs, Google Research,
and Microsoft Research. Partha is a co-organizer of the NAACL-HLT 2012
workshop on web-scale knowledge extraction from text (AKBC-WEKEX 2012),
and an Area Co-Chair for EMNLP-CoNLL 2012.