Istituto di Scienza e Tecnologie
dell’Informazione “A. Faedo”

Speakers:

Giacomo Berardi

Referent:

Andrea Esuli

Suppose an organization needs to classify a set D of textual documents, and suppose that D is too large to be classified manually, so that resorting to some form of automated text classification (TC) is the only viable option. Suppose also that the organization has strict accuracy standards, so that the level of effectiveness obtainable via state-of-the-art TC technology is not sufficient. In this case, the most plausible strategy to follow is to classify D by means of an automatic classifier F, and then to have a human editor inspect the results of the automatic classification, correcting misclassifications where appropriate. The human annotator will obviously inspect only a subset D' of D (since it would not otherwise make sense to have an initial automated classification phase). We call this scenario Semi-Automated Text Classification (SATC). An automated system can support this process by ranking the automatically labelled documents in a way that maximizes the expected increase in effectiveness that derives from inspecting D'. An obvious strategy is to rank D so that the documents that F has classified with the lowest confidence are top-ranked. In this work we show that this strategy is suboptimal. We develop a new utility-theoretic ranking method based on the notion of inspection gain, defined as the improvement in classification effectiveness that would derive by inspecting and correcting a given automatically labelled document. We also propose a new effectiveness measure for SATC-oriented ranking methods, based on the expected reduction in classification error brought about by partially inspecting a list generated by a given ranking method.
We report the results of experiments showing that, with respect to the baseline method above, and according to the proposed measure, our ranking method can achieve substantially higher expected reductions in classification error.

NOTE: This seminar is the third one of the series of six seminars presented by the winners of the prize "Young researchers ISTI 2013". Giacomo Berardi placed first in the PhD student category.

Speakers:

Simon Davies ( LSE Enterprise, a wholly owned subsidiary of The London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK)

Referent:

Diego Latella

Europe - along with much of the developing world - is ready to implement a new and robust regime of data protection. The IT industry is carefully considering the challenges and the opportunities that these new legal regulations may create. Data protection provides a pillar of trust necessary to nurture emerging services and products. Even so, concern has been expressed that the new rules could hinder innovation and create barriers to design and engineering. Some companies believe the regulatory bar has now been set too high and that data protection will create substantial problems. In this talk veteran privacy expert Simon Davies discusses whether the proposed rules have struck the right formula.

Simon Davies is the Founder of Privacy International and Associate Director of LSE Enterprise. He has been a Visiting Fellow in Law at both the University of Greenwich and the University of Essex, and spent 13 years at LSE, where he taught the groundbreaking MSc Masters course in "Privacy & Data Protection". He is also co-director of LSE’s Policy Engagement Network. Simon Davies is widely acknowledged as one of the most influential data protection and internet rights experts in the world and is a pioneer of the international privacy arena. His work in consumer rights and technology policy has spanned over 25 years and has directly influenced the development of law and public policy in more than 40 countries. He has advised a wide range of corporate, government and professional bodies, including the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Recently, Simon Davies has been tasked by cross-party rapporteurs of the European Parliament to conduct a wide-ranging external assessment of the European Commission's proposed reforms to the EU data protection framework. He brings a unique interface with global stakeholders, from major international corporations to government and civil society.

Nota: Martedi 21 maggio, cioè il giorno prima del seminario, alle ore 15, in Aula Faedo, verrà proiettata la registrazione di una puntata del programma Cyborg City della CNN che comprende, tra l'altro, un'intervista a Simon Davies.