Can vectors read minds better than experts? Comparing data augmentation strategies for the automated scoring of childrens mindreading ability

In this paper we implement and compare 7 different data augmentation strategies for the task of automatic scoring of childrens ability to understand others thoughts, feelings, and desires (or mindreading). We recruit in-domain experts to re-annotate augmented samples and determine to what extent each strategy preserves the original rating. We also carry out multiple experiments to measure how much each augmentation strategy improves the performance of automatic scoring systems. To determine the capabilities of automatic systems to generalize to unseen data, we create UK-MIND-20 - a new corpus of childrens performance on tests of mindreading, consisting of 10,320 question-answer pairs. We obtain a new state-of-the-art performance on the MIND-CA corpus, improving macro-F1-score by 6 points. Results indicate that both the number of training examples and the quality of the augmentation strategies affect the performance of the systems. The task-specific augmentations generally outperform task-agnostic augmentations. Automatic augmentations based on vectors (GloVe, FastText) perform the worst. We find that systems trained on MIND-CA generalize well to UK-MIND-20. We demonstrate that data augmentation strategies also improve the performance on unseen data.

What is on your mind? Automated Scoring of Mindreading in Childhood and Early Adolescence

In this paper we present the first work on the automated scoring of mindreading ability in middle childhood and early adolescence. We create MIND-CA, a new corpus of 11,311 question-answer pairs in English from 1,066 children aged 7 to 14. We perform machine learning experiments and carry out extensive quantitative and qualitative evaluation. We obtain promising results, demonstrating the applicability of state-of-the-art NLP solutions to a new domain and task.

On Physical Adversarial Patches for Object Detection

In this paper, we demonstrate a physical adversarial patch attack against object detectors, notably the YOLOv3 detector. Unlike previous work on physical object detection attacks, which required the patch to overlap with the objects being misclassified or avoiding detection, we show that a properly designed patch can suppress virtually all the detected objects in the image. That is, we can place the patch anywhere in the image, causing all existing objects in the image to be missed entirely by the detector, even those far away from the patch itself. This in turn opens up new lines of physical attacks against object detection systems, which require no modification of the objects in a scene. A demo of the system can be found at https://youtu.be/WXnQjbZ1e7Y.

SBVR vs OCL: A Comparative Analysis of Standards

In software modelling, the designers have to produce UML visual models with software constraints. Similarly, in business modelling, designers have to model business processes using business constraints (business rules). Constraints are the key components in the skeleton of business or software models. A designer has to write constraints to semantically compliment business models or UML models and finally implementing the constraints into business processes or source code. Business constraints/rules can be written using SBVR (Semantics of Business Vocabulary and Rules) while OCL (Object Constraint Language) is the well-known medium for writing software constraints. SBVR and OCL are two significant standards from OMG. Both standards are principally different as SBVR is typically used in business domains and OCL is employed to compliment software models. However, we have identified a few similarities in both standards that are interesting to study. In this paper, we have performed a comparative analysis of both standards as we are looking for a mechanism for automatic transformation of SBVR to OCL. The major emphasis of the study is to highlight principal features of SBVR and OCL such as similarities, differences and key parameters on which these both standards can work together.

Bollinger Bands Thirty Years Later

The goal of this study is to explain and examine the statistical underpinnings of the Bollinger Band methodology. We start off by elucidating the rolling regression time series model and deriving its explicit relationship to Bollinger Bands. Next we illustrate the use of Bollinger Bands in pairs trading and prove the existence of a specific return duration relationship in Bollinger Band pairs trading.Then by viewing the Bollinger Band moving average as an approximation to the random walk plus noise (RWPN) time series model, we develop a pairs trading variant that we call Fixed Forecast Maximum Duration Bands (FFMDPT). Lastly, we conduct pairs trading simulations using SAP and Nikkei index data in order to compare the performance of the variant with Bollinger Bands.

An ascription-based approach to speech acts

The two principal areas of natural language processing research in pragmatics are belief modelling and speech act processing. Belief modelling is the development of techniques to represent the mental attitudes of a dialogue participant. The latter approach, speech act processing, based on speech act theory, involves viewing dialogue in planning terms. Utterances in a dialogue are modelled as steps in a plan where understanding an utterance involves deriving the complete plan a speaker is attempting to achieve. However, previous speech act based approaches have been limited by a reliance upon relatively simplistic belief modelling techniques and their relationship to planning and plan recognition. In particular, such techniques assume precomputed nested belief structures. In this paper, we will present an approach to speech act processing based on novel belief modelling techniques where nested beliefs are propagated on demand.

Mixing Metaphors

Mixed metaphors have been neglected in recent metaphor research. This paper suggests that such neglect is short-sighted. Though mixing is a more complex phenomenon than straight metaphors, the same kinds of reasoning and knowledge structures are required. This paper provides an analysis of both parallel and serial mixed metaphors within the framework of an AI system which is already capable of reasoning about straight metaphorical manifestations and argues that the processes underlying mixing are central to metaphorical meaning. Therefore, any theory of metaphors must be able to account for mixing.

Coulomb Gap in a Doped Semiconductor near the Metal-Insulator Transition: Tunneling Experiment and Scaling Ansatz

Electron tunneling experiments are used to probe Coulomb correlation effects in the single-particle density-of-states (DOS) of boron-doped silicon crystals near the critical density of the metal-insulator transition (MIT). At low energies, a DOS measurement distinguishes between insulating and metallic samples with densities 10 to 15 % on either side of the MIT. However, at higher energies the DOS of both insulators and metals show a common behavior, increasing roughly as the square-root of energy. The observed characteristics of the DOS can be understood using a classical treatment of Coulomb interactions combined with a phenomenological scaling ansatz to describe the length-scale dependence of the dielectric constant as the MIT is approached from the insulating side.