US 2004/0111253 A1 · System and method for rapid development of natural language understanding using active learning

Abstract

A method, computer program product, and data processing system for training a statistical parser by utilizing active learning techniques to reduce the size of the corpus of human-annotated training samples (e.g., sentences) needed is disclosed. According to a preferred embodiment of the present invention, the statistical parser under training is used to compare the grammatical structure of the samples according to the parser's current level of training. The samples are then divided into clusters, with each cluster representing samples having a similar structure as ascertained by the statistical parser. Uncertainty metrics are applied to the clustered samples to select samples from each cluster that reflect uncertainty in the statistical parser's grammatical model. These selected samples may then be annotated by a human trainer for training the statistical parser.

Claims30

Dependent claims

A method in a data processing system comprising:

parsing with a parsing model a plurality of samples from a training set to obtain parses of each of the plurality of samples;
dividing the plurality of samples into clusters such that each cluster contains samples having similar parses;
selecting at least one sample from each of the clusters for human annotation;
and
updating the parsing model with the annotated at least one sample from each of the clusters.

2 more elements

A computer program product in a computer-readable medium comprising functional descriptive material that, when executed by a computer, enables the computer to perform acts including:

parsing with a parsing model a plurality of samples from a training set to obtain parses of each of the plurality of samples;
dividing the plurality of samples into clusters such that each cluster contains samples having similar parses;
selecting at least one sample from each of the clusters for human annotation;
and
updating the parsing model with the annotated at least one sample from each of the clusters.

2 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

System and method for rapid development of natural language understanding using active learning

Life of this patent

System and method for rapid development of natural language understanding using active learning

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims30