Natural Language Processing and Social Interaction, Fall 2017 (original) (raw)

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Prerequisites All of the following: CS 2110 or equivalent programming experience; a course in artificial intelligence or any relevant subfield (e.g., NLP, information retrieval, machine learning, Cornell CS courses numbered 47xx or 67xx); proficiency with using machine learning tools (e.g., fluency at training an SVM, comfort with assessing a classifier’s performance using cross-validation)

Enrollment Limited to [[PhD and [CS MS] students] who meet the prerequisites]. Auditing (either officially or unofficially) is not permitted.

Related classes: see Cornell's NLP course list, plus GOVT 6461, Public Opinion [the 2012 syllabus, time/location/some material/paper coverage is different 2017fall] COMM 6750 Research methods for social networks and social media.

The homepage for the previous running of CS6742 may also be useful. Here is the list of all prior runnings: 2016 fall :: 2015 fall :: 2014 fall :: 2013 fall:: 2011 spring

Administrative info

CMS page http://cmsx.csuglab.cornell.edu. Site for submitting assignments, unless otherwise noted. You may find this graphically-oriented guide to common operations useful: see how to replace a prior submission (point 1), how to tell if CMS successfully received your files (point 2), how to form a group (point 4).

Course discussion site https://blogs.cornell.edu/nlpsoc2017fa (access restricted to enrolled students). Course announcements and Q&A/discussion site. Social interaction and all that, you know.

Office hours and contact info See Prof. Lee's homepage and scroll to the section on Contact and availability info.

Grading Of most interest to is productive research-oriented discussion participation (in class and/or on the course discussion site, interesting research proposals and pilot studies, and a good-faith final research project.

Academic Integrity Academic and scientific integrity compels one to properly attribute to others any work, ideas, or phrasing that one did not create oneself. To do otherwise is fraud.

Certain points deserve emphasis here. In this class, talking to and helping others is strongly encouraged. You may also, with attribution, use the code from other sources. The easiest rule of thumb is, acknowledge the work and contributions and ideas and words and wordings of others. Do not copy or slightly reword portions of papers, Wikipedia articles, textbooks, other students' work, Stack Overflow answers, something you heard from a talk or a conversation or saw on the Internet, or anything else, really, without acknowledging your sources. See "Acknowledging the Work of Others" in The Essential Guide to Academic Integrity at Cornell and http://www.theuniversityfaculty.cornell.edu/AcadInteg/ for more information and useful examples.

This is not to say that you can receive course credit for work that is not your own — e.g., taking someone else's report and putting your name at the top, next to the other person(s)' names. However, violations of academic integrity (e.g., fraud) undergo the academic-integrity hearing process on top of any grade penalties imposed, whereas not following the rules of the assignment “only” risks grade penalties.

Overall course structure

Lecture Agenda Pedagogical purpose Assignments
#1 Course overview A1 released: pilot empirical study for a research idea based on the given readings.
#2 - #4 Lectures on topics related to the A1 readings Case studies to explore some topics and research styles find interesting.Get-to-know-you exercises to get everyone familiar and comfortable with each other.
Next block of meetings Dicussion of proposed projects based on the readings Practice with fast research-idea generation. Feedback as to what proposals are most interesting, most feasible, etc. Discussion of student project proposals, based on the readings for that class meeting. Each class meeting involves everyone reading at least one of the two assigned papers and posting a new research proposal based on the reading to the course discussion site. Thoughtfulness and creativity are most important to , but take feasibility into account.
Next block of meetings Lectures on, potentially, linguistic coordination, linguistic adaptation, influence, persuasion, diffusion, discourse structure, advanced language modeling. Foundational material Potentially some assignments based on the lectures.
Remainder of the course Activities related to course projects Development of a "full-blown" research project (although time restrictions may limit ambitions). For purposes, "interesting" is more important than "thorough".

Resources

#1 Aug 22: Introduction

Class images, links and handouts

Lecture references

#2 Aug 24: A1 inspiration: Overview of conversations

Class images, links and handouts

Gespraechsgemetzel
Image: photo of entry 106 of Ben Schott, Schottenfreude: German Words for the Human Condition (2013)

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Other references

#3 Aug 29: More A1 inspiration: discussion and persuasion

Class images, links and handouts

Wondermark cartoon
Image credit: David Malki !,In which Debate is debated, Feb 21st, 2014.

Lecture references

#4 Aug 31: Linguistic coordination

Class images, links and handouts

Lecture references

#5 Sep 5: Real-time measurement of coordination; A1 check-ins

References

#6 Sep 7: Appointments (see email for signup link)

#7 Sep 12: A1 presentations

#8 Sep 14: News, influence and information propagation, part 1

Class images, links and handouts


Image source: David Malki ! Wondermark 1209: Talk and Awe

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#9 Sep 19: News, influence and information propagation, part 2

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Lecture references

#10 Sep 21: Proposals discussion (A2)

The readings

Class images, links and handouts


Image source: Dorothy Gambrell, Cat and Girl: Steal This Cat and Girl

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Other references

#11 Sep 26: Words across space, community, and time

Class images, links and handouts

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Other references

#12 Sep 28: Proposals discussion (A3)

Class images, links and handouts

Image source: English Language & Usage Stack Exchange. Click through for some interesting answers!

Lecture references (thanks to everyone for these pointers!)

Other references

#13 Oct 3: (Misc.) topics and power

Class images, links and handouts

Lecture references

#14 Oct 5: Proposals discussion (A4)

The readings

Lecture references

Other references

Oct 10: No class — Fall Break

#15 Oct 12: Optional project-proposal appointments

#16 Oct 17: What makes two sub-languages different?

Class images, links and handouts

Image source: http://www.keepcalm-o-matic.co.uk/p/keep-calm-and-never-tell-me-the-odds-6/.

Lecture references

#17 Oct 19: How different are two language models?

Class images, links and handouts

Lecture references

Other references

#18 Oct 24: Feasibility-check appointments

#19 Oct 26: Language modeling and differences between language models, cont.

Class images, links and handouts

Inspirational, thought-provoking image by Chenhao Tan (see handout for explanation):

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#20 Oct 31: Models of local language structure: vocabulary space

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#21 Nov 2: Foreshadowing: some connections between information theory and psycholinguistics; the Brown clustering algorithm for deriving structure of vocabulary space

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#22 Nov 7: Local structure: phrase and sentence space

Class images, links and handouts

This parrot is no more. It has ceased to be. It's expired and gone to meet its maker. This is a late parrot. It's a stiff. Bereft of life, it rests in peace. If you hadn't nailed it to the perch, it would be pushing up the daisies. It's rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. This is an ex-parrot. - Graham Chapman Image source: AZ Quotes.

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#23 Nov 9: Latent discourse/dialog structure

Class images, links and handouts


Left: Garry Kasparov, Maurice Ashley, Yasser Seirawan and a bunch of soft drinks at the 1996 match against Deep Blue. Photo by Kenneth Thompson, provided at computerhistory.org
Right: Muarice Ashley and Yasser Seirawan commentating on the 1997 re-match. Photo by Monroe Newborn, provided atcomputerhistory.org

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#24 Nov 14: No class

#25 Nov 16: Latent discourse/dialog structure, part two

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Clip source: hill35billy's YouTube channel; the movie is The Pink Panther Strikes Again. Start at 50s.

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#26 Nov 21: Latent discourse/dialog structure, part three

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Pinker, Steven and the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) Animate, posted to YouTube on Feb 10, 2011. Language as a Window into Human Nature

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Nov 23: No class — Thanksgiving Break

#27 Nov 28: Project presentations (attendance by all is mandatory)

Class images, links and handouts

References

#28 Nov 30: Project presentations (attendance by all is mandatory)

Class images, links and handouts

Lecture references

Mon Dec. 11, 4:30pm: Final project writeup due

Code for generating the calendar formatting adapted from Andrew Myers. Portions of the content of this website and course were created by collaboration between Cristian Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil and Lillian Lee over multiple runnings of this course.