#in french class the other day i tried to ask a question and the syntax got so far away from me i just sort of trailed off wretchedly

[coquelicoq]

"Monte-Cristo poussa un cri sauvage dont peuvent seuls se faire une idée ceux qui ont entendu le rugissement du lion blessé." (Le Comte de Monte-Cristo, p. 1149)

if this is really the best word order with which to express this idea, no wonder i can't form a french sentence to save my life.

[nobutlikeimobessedwithbutchlogan]

Haikyuu Rambles (College au? but covid exists)

Forward:

Suga & Daichi are college dorm mates

Their dorm is connected to 2 other suites so they have access to a fridge & utilities to cook

i don’t mention their other suite mates this oneshot focuses on Suga & Daichi

Covid shut down their school

classes are still in session virtually

all students must stay in their dorms unless absolutely necessary (so to go & buy groceries)

Over their years rooming together, Suga has acquired lots of stuff to make coffee

he has a milk frother, french press/ a bunch of stuff

so Suga can make many various caffeinated beverages (he’s like a mini-barista)

Suga drinks coffee. 

Too much, in Daichi’s humble opinion.

He has at least 4 cups everyday. Sometimes more.

CONCERNINGLY MORE.

An iced macchiato for his 7am class. Why did Suga think signing up for this class would be a good idea? He doesn’t know. Suga supposes that if he were in the classroom instead of taking classes out of his dorm room things might be different, but now he wishes past Suga had been kinder to present Suga... because can’t keep his eyes open for Calc class without coffee-in-hand. Thankfully Bokuto is in the class too & asks a question every 5 minutes which keeps the class engaged, but Suga has to wonder how Bokuto can somehow be so loud over Zoom. It’s uncanny.

An americano at 11am for la clase de español. Sitting in a bean-chair near the window for some natural light, Suga sips from his cup & listens as la profesora talks. They’re going into breakout zooms to discuss their opinions on what happened in the last episode of “Gran Hotel” they had to watch for homework, & he sadly puts the americano down to unmute. Akaashi is randomly assigned his partner today, so the two hablan sobre las problemas de Julio y Alicia. 

A cold brew at 2pm for Literature. At this point, all the earlier caffeine has worn off, so Suga needs something strong to keep him going. This class is both a blessing & a curse; they only meet once a week, but their sessions are 2 & half hours long. They’re dreadful. At least Daichi takes the class as well, so they can share a monitor and sit under a warm blanket together during class, but not even cuddles can make the class end sooner. After a while of listening to the professor lecture about the peculiarities of the syntax of some Shakespeare poem, Suga feels like his brain has turned to mush, and sips of the cold brew force his internal systems to remain awake, just for a little longer.

A few shots of straight expresso at 4pm to study. On days like today, all of Suga’s classes finish in the morning, so getting work done as soon as possible means he can go to bed as soon as possible. A while ago Suga tried one of those bang energy drinks Noya had told him about, but it was too sugary. Suga likes his coffee plain, which surprised a lot of his friends, but he just can’t handle that much sweetness in a beverage. He’d rather eat something sweet alongside his coffee to balance out the bitterness. But with the bean juice flowing through his veins, he feels motivated to tackle his assignments and aggressively gets to work.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Daichi is concerned. 

As Suga’s roommate, he feels like it’s partially his responsibility if Suga gets a heart attack from too much coffee, but google says that a lethal amount of caffeine is around 30 cups of coffee... It would be pretty difficult to drink that much coffee in one sitting (right? right?!?!?!?), but still, Daichi is worried.

Seeing Suga spend hours up each night working so diligently on his homework so he can succeed makes him feel proud, yet at the same time increasingly frustrated that Suga’s dream degree seems to be slowly eating away at his health.

Watching Suga start to shake on the daily due to caffeine is not something he wants to get used to, but hopefully the habit will die off as the quarter ends (soon! thank goodness).

Daichi sits on his bed, pondering different ways he can help Suga ease his workload, when a loud slam pulls him from his thoughts. Suga has fallen asleep on his textbook. 

Suga would want to be woken up, but seeing how easily Suga can fall asleep even after a consuming a double(?) expresso is quite concerning. He must be beyond exhausted. Still, knowing that he would get an earful for not waking him up earlier, Daichi sets an hour timer on his phone. He’ll wake up Suga then. 

And while he’s not one to enable Suga’s bad habits, maybe in the meantime he’ll try to make Suga some coffee. But preferably one with a lower caffeine concentration. 

Walking to their suite’s kitchen area and getting out the milk frother & coffee beans, Daichi wonders if he could possibly pass off hot chocolate as coffee. He doesn’t think Suga would buy it, but it’s worth a shot. 

[kadimadayschool]

The Right Place: How to Choose the Best School for Your Child – Hebrew Day School

Dr. Steven Lorch explains what distinguishes Jewish day schools from other private schools with an international reputation, and suggests to parents: "The place in which you feel at home is the school you should choose for your children's education."

 In 2007, a study was published that found that graduates of Jewish day schools in America have a significant academic advantage in ability and achievement. This was well known years earlier; however, the study was an official confirmation that children who study in Jewish schools reach higher levels of achievement, and when they are in college, they have wider options than their peers who studied in non-Jewish schools.

 When American Jewish or Israeli American parents are asked what is important to them in a school, how they choose a school for their children to go to, and whether Jewish Studies are a significant factor in their decision, many of them answer that they are interested in keeping the tradition, that their children should feel connected to their roots and their identity, but not necessarily that they should invest much time or effort in Jewish Studies classes.

 Dr. Steven Lorch, who researched the topic in depth and also published a well-known article in 2008 that discusses these matters, says that this reflects thinking that is partial and not necessarily correct. Because this is a subject that concerns many parents, we decided to ask Lorch about the factors to consider when one is at a crossroads on the way to choosing a school for one's child.

 Why Choose a Jewish Education?

 "Many parents think about the Jewish and identity-related advantages for their child. They want their child to continue to be a Jew, to be loyal to family traditions, and even to be able to communicate with family members who live in Israel. In effect, they measure all these desires against the benefits of non-Jewish schools.

 "Parents don't factor in the academic advantages of Jewish education over non-Jewish education, and this is the root of the problem. If one thinks about all the benefits of a Jewish school, it will be clear that it is superior to public or private schools on every academic and community dimension."

 The Relational Benefit

 "One of the factors that is considered a predictor of success in education and in life is a school's community character. To be part of a supportive, embracing community is an important feature that influences the ability of a child. In the psychological literature, this is called a sense of belonging, and it is strongly present in Jewish schools, but not necessarily true of non-Jewish schools. In reality, this is the first advantage that Jewish schools have that parents tend to ignore."

 Dr. Lorch, who received his master's degree in education from Harvard and his doctorate in religion and education from Columbia, and is an ordained rabbi, is a recognized authority on education and Jewish education. Lorch is currently the head of Kadima Day School in Los Angeles. He came to Kadima after 40 years of heading schools in Israel and America, having arrived in the summer of 2018 from New York on account of the rich community that the school offers and the values that he is developing.

 When he recalls the many parents he has spoken with over the years who struggled with the question of Jewish education,  he says that many think that they are paying a price in other realms for the sake of the Jewish aspect. "From their perspective, they want Judaism enough that they are prepared to compromise. This is an error. No compromise is needed; rather, there is an advantage in every respect."

 "If we take into account not only the Jewish aspect, but also the values-based, community-oriented, relational, and academic dimensions - the Jewish school is superior in all of them. This is the right way of thinking, which will lead the ambivalent Jewish parent to the right school for his or her child."

 Dr. Lorch speaks from his rich experience, and in the aftermath of one school visit that took place 12 years ago, in the 2000s, when he served as the chairperson of a school accreditation team, that helped him understand with utmost clarity the importance and advantage of Jewish education.

 The members of accreditation teams would visit many different schools and be hosted by them for several days, and at the end of their visits would write reports on the schools' progress based on their achievements. In this connection, Lorch and 12 fellow teachers and administrators, the members of the team, were hosted by a Jewish school in New Jersey.

 "I had a powerful experience," he recalled. "I sat with my fellow team members, nearly all of them from famous, well-reputed non-Jewish independent schools in the area. Something happened that I hadn't expected. They commended the Jewish school in New Jersey for its successes, not just in the Jewish realm, but also in its values education, community spirit, academic preparation, and its students' future life chances."

 The strong and surprising statements that he heard made him proud but also aroused his curiosity. "I felt proud to be a Jewish educator, but in my capacity as chairperson of the team I had to suppress this feeling and focus my professional curiosity." He started to research the matter in depth. "I tried to inquire into each of these interesting statements. I examined the findings, the studies that had been published about each domain or topic. I reached several conclusions that can be divided into three key features that can perhaps shed light and explain the claims of the team members."

 Academic Advantages

 "In Jewish schools, students learn approximately twice as many academic subjects as students from other schools. Alongside the range of subjects studied in every school in America: language arts, history, science, math, and a foreign language, students learn a complete second range of subjects: Bible, Rabbinic literature, Jewish history, Jewish thought, and even law - a subject that is taught in America as a post-bachelor's program is studied in Jewish schools beginning in second or third grade."

 While he was writing his article, an important study from Brandeis University was published that focused on the success of graduates of Jewish day schools in undergraduate university programs, compared to the graduates of other schools. The study revealed that graduates of Jewish day schools felt fully prepared for the workload in university. The study load was familiar to them because they were accustomed to a long school day. The homework load demanded of them in university was similar to, and even less than, the workload in high school, and they were better prepared than their peers who had not attended Jewish schools.

 "Work ethic, skills, and perseverance - these are the three characteristics that distinguish Jewish schools from others," says Lorch.

 Much research has been devoted to the effects of bilingualism, and they show the importance and great benefit of knowing languages at a high level already from a young age. Speakers of at least two languages possess advanced academic abilities, as expected, in learning languages, but also in other, unexpected areas, such as map reading. Apparently, bilingualism shapes the brain in such a way that it becomes able to learn in ways that monolinguals are unable to achieve.

 Lorch explains: "In schools that teach Hebrew as a spoken language, and it becomes in effect a language on a par with the native language for the school community, it becomes something more significant. In schools that teach Hebrew as an academic language, meaning literacy skills and the language of the Bible and prayers rather than as a living language - the impact is smaller. I would not predict the advantages of bilingualism from such schools, because it [bilingualism] doesn't exist there."

 Don't Non-Jewish Schools Teach Second Languages, Such as French or Spanish?

 "We need to understand that the timing is important. The fact that students start to learn a second language at a relatively young age has a great influence on the brain plasticity of the child."

 The third element of the academic advantage is the method of study in Jewish subjects. "Jewish schools are engines of academic excellence," Lorch explains. "When students learn, in addition to spoken Hebrew as a second language, ancient Biblical Hebrew, with its unique syntax and vocabulary, this is comparable to an Israeli child who starts to learn Shakespeare in English at a very high level, beginning in second grade. At a certain stage, in fourth or fifth grade, another layer of studying Rashi and other commentaries is added. These commentaries are not in modern Hebrew, and also not in Biblical Hebrew. Again, there's a new layer of language that they experience. It's like teaching Shakespeare with commentaries, also in English, but from a few centuries later, which isn't the same as modern English."

 What Else Do Students Gain from Studying Bible?

 "They learn how to look at a brief passage from several angles at once, to try to understand this passage from every angle at the same time, whereby the first commentary is possible, and the second and third enrich the understanding. Here too, if we draw a parallel to studying poetry in university, it's like taking a word or two and analyzing them from several angles. Students in Jewish schools learned skills beginning at a very young age that will be required of them in their academic studies in the future."

 Is the Study of Bible Commentary Different in Judaism from Other Religions?

 "There are thousands of Jewish cases [of texts which Jewish commentators analyze and debate], unlike other religions, where such instances are rare. Matters of this kind are usually studied only in institutes of higher learning, but here, already from a young age, students are taught how to inquire and interpret in depth. Even if students in second grade, for example, aren't ready to engage independently in an in-depth investigation, their teachers are steeped in these investigations and are able to structure the value concepts in a way that  draws from the tradition."

 Advantages in Values Education

 According to Dr. Lorch, another important benefit, in addition to the others, is values education.

 "I discovered that, in the independent school world, one of the internal critiques that the schools themselves identify as a weakness is that, as a general rule, the shared values that they impart are very general, and it is hard to derive practical implications from them."

 What Do You Mean?

 "Let's take a striking example. We identified that they all advocate equality, fairness, and so on, but what is behind these commitments? What can the students say about this value? What happens when a school is struggling with a particular issue or dilemma? To what extent are they helped by a particular value? This was their self-critique: what does fairness mean? Does it mean that everyone is treated the same, or should each person receive what he or she needs, even if it's different from what others receive? What is fairness, after all?" Lorch asked these questions and came to the realization that, in non-Jewish education, even in a religious setting, schools lacked the tools to inquire deeply.

 Do Jewish Schools Have the Tools to Grapple with These Questions?

 "Yes," concludes Dr. Lorch unequivocally. "Jewish schools have a large number of sources, each of which delves into and analyzes the particular value, so that the value does not only remain at the level of slogans or general statements, but, in addition, provides specific, detailed guidance to the school."

 Lorch refers to an important value that is frequently mentioned in Judaism - humility. "What is humility? In order to know, let's go to the Bible. In the Bible, we read about Moses, who was said to be the humblest person. Already there we find a reflection of this value. When we analyze his life and deeds, we learn more about this value. Already in the first layer of Jewish tradition we find details about this matter that don't exist elsewhere. There is an entire tradition of commentaries on these verses about Moses and other Biblical characters. To this can be added the many legal rulings on this matter that are, in effect, legal debates that developed around real cases that occurred. In the study of other religions, there is no parallel because there is no tradition of commentary and legal argumentation comparable to what we find in Judaism."

 These three distinctive qualities, the communal-relational, the academic, and the values-based, are good enough reasons, according to Dr. Lorch, for parents to be aware of and take into consideration when they are making a decision about their child's schooling.

 Once a Parent Has Chosen to Send a Child to a Jewish School and Discovers That There Are Many Such Schools, What Additional Tips Can You Give to Those Who Are Wavering?

 "Being a customer in education demands a lot of self-confidence. When we buy something like a car or clothing, for the most part we know something about the merchandise, and if not, we know where to turn to find reviews and even to read in-depth analyses of the product in order to make the best purchase. In education, it's hard to see the product and very hard to differentiate among the manufacturers. Therefore, many parents try to find a substitute for a direct judgment of the quality of teaching and learning. The substitute is usually something visible: what does the school building look like, and not necessarily the curriculum? Parents find it hard to judge for themselves, and therefore they tend to check who else sends their children to the school: friends, famous people, wealthy people, etc. This comes from a lack of confidence."

 After he identified the problem, Lorch comes to his suggestion. "Feel confident to make your own assessment of the atmosphere and culture of the school. You are more knowledgeable and able to do this than anyone else. You are experts in your child. Feel the atmosphere that is best for your child. Ask yourselves, is the atmosphere comfortable for you? Does it speak to you? Can you see yourselves fitting into the school community? Don't ask yourselves whether you want to aspire to this community, but rather is it the right fit for you now? If the community and the atmosphere are a good fit for a parent touring the school, that's the right school for that parent's child. Different schools are right for different parents, and therefore there's a variety of Jewish schools. You know what your child needs better than anyone else. Trust yourselves and your gut feeling. Just like the El-Al commercial: Feel at home."

 Dr. Lorch speaks from experience. The reason he moved to Los Angeles to head Kadima Day School, after he had led well reputed schools in New York, is similar to parents' decision making. "I chose to move here and work at Kadima because I felt most at home here. It is a welcoming and warm school. I was impressed with all the people I met here: parents, faculty, and students. I encountered serious people, interesting and interested not just in their own needs but in the common good. This is not to be taken for granted; I haven't seen this in many other places."

 Kadima Day School, which has been in existence for 49 years in the West Valley of Los Angeles, and which Dr. Lorch has been leading for the past year, won him over. In Kadima, Lorch and the faculty are working to create a community characterized by a mixture of tradition and innovation. This independent-community school that is growing from day to day is an institution of learning, inspiration, and growth which continues to produce many students whose academic ability demonstrably surpasses that of many of their peers whom they encounter in later life - academic excellence that propels them toward a future filled with opportunity, in accordance with the guiding principles of Dr. Lorch.

 To know more information visit:

https://www.kadimadayschool.org/

[nlprocby]

Ekaterina Kruchinina: NLP is on the road

Hi Katja, let me ask about your professional experience: how did you find your interest in computational linguistics and developed through it?

Hi, I started my university studies in Rostov-on-Don, Russia. My subject was German language and literature, with emphasis on literature and translation studies. I studied for 2 years and then continued my studies at the University of Cologne in Germany. I started there from the first year, as in Germany similar program starts two years later than in Russia. Additionally, I took another topic of interest, French, as I was keen to learn it. But after a couple of years, I realized I had high interest in linguistics, especially after taking courses in modern linguistics and formal syntax in university. But honestly, I was not aware of computational linguistics at that point. One day I found that there is a study subject ‘Linguistic data processing’ at the University of Cologne and I joined the class after a talk with a professor. After a couple of years I started to work at the department, and of course, it was a good time to learn programming, which I really enjoyed. At that point, I realized much more about computer science. We studied Java as a first language, though many in the field start now with Python. I remember we programmed a search engine over a summer.

It reminds me a talk to Natalia Karlova-Burbonus. Natalia has a very similar story: going from interest to the German language to Computational Linguistics in Germany. 

My next question whether you remember your first project or last at that time.

Yes, my first job was related to exploring self-organizing maps (so-called Kohonen nets). I don’t remember all project details, but we worked on syntactic dependency structures and tried to represent it in Kohonen maps for the German language. After we tried different IE approaches, text classification and run other experiments. That was a great time for learning. I had done an internship during my studies as well. It was in Paris, at a software company called Arisem, so I could also practice my French. It was the B2B company which focused on semantic search, dedicated one, including crawling. Then I came back to finish my master thesis.

What was master thesis topic about?

It was about the numerical representation of text corpora including how can we represent corpora for classification. I tried LSA that time also, but the topic was like a meta-analysis of different approaches.

Then Ph.D. happened to you.

Yes, at some point after I decided to stay in academia, to do a Ph.D. I went to Jena university, a big move from Cologne. But it was not only a Ph.D. position but a research assistant position in a European project BootStrep. The focus was on biomedical text processing: text mining in biology, semantic search over the publication of medicine/bio published research. There is a huge database PubMed which has millions of citations and which continue to grow quickly. And, obviously, a problem for a biologist is to find relevant information in such an enormous amount of data. So, preprocessing of data, named entity recognition (NER), normalization of extracted entities and relation extraction, are of particular interest here. My personal focus was on relation extraction, e.g. how a researcher describes gene expression processes.

Did you have medicine ontology for named entities?

We had a couple of Ph.D. students, which helped to develop the ontology in our group, of course using terminology from established sources. It reminds also what else was great about the project group: everybody had a specific skill-set and the tasks were assigned well and according to a person focus: somebody worked on NER and fast annotation using active learning, someone - preprocessing, another person cared about the ontology, search engines. I focused on detection of events and relations. It was a great experience to have such a skilled team.

Do you remember a day when you realized that you need to leave the project?

I continued working on the project during my Ph.D. I started later and the main result I would say was my participation in BioNLP 2009 shared task, where I got a second place once evaluated. After that, I elaborated on my topic. On 2012 I’ve completed my Ph.D. and started to look for a new challenge. I could have stayed in the Biomedical domain, but I was open to other topics also as I studied a lot while reading about different topics, including dependency parsing, collecting data in general. Then I found an open position at Nuance, there were not many at that moment in Germany. So, I became one of the first joining the NLU (Natural Language Understanding) team and moved to Aachen, which I also like as it’s close to Cologne.

How many people in Nuance NLU team now?

There are about 60 people in Automotive cloud NLU, which includes Aachen, Montreal, and Burlington offices and people working remotely. Company-wide there are more NLU people (100+).

NLU is a challenge by the name. So, tell us, what do you do and how do you overcome the challenges?

First, our main application area is an automotive domain. Our team works at the moment on a classification of user intents and named entity recognition. So, you have one-two step dialog, one-shot query, which requires a classification of the intent. I’d say that it’s now for the navigation system, office system in the car.

Well, actually from my experience I remember around a year ago participating in a hackathon organized by Nuance NLU system. And if I recall correctly, for NLU system you need to provide not only intents but also labels, concepts to train it, am I right?

Yes, you also need to provide concepts which need to be detected.

Would be nice if you can share an example of a use-case.

Ok, the simple example is a question about the weather: “What will be the weather tomorrow in Trento?” So, we need to recognize the intent: weather, the date: tomorrow, the location: Trento. Another example, you can: would it be sunny tomorrow in Trento? So, we do have multiple steps, relying on statistical models and many features, like named entities, and lexical information (keywords sun, weather, etc). Both are possible: you can do intent classification first and then named entities or the other way around.

As I remember from the mentioned hackathon, you have two interfaces: speech and text.

You are right, but it’s another project, it’s Nuance MIX you mean, our project. In our solution, we provide an ability to type, use speech interface and handwriting.

You haven’t told us a lot of internal details yet ;) Ok, what languages do you support?

We support over 20 languages for Automotive cloud NLU, additionally to major European languages we have Czech, Swedish, Turkish, for Asia - Japanese, Cantonese, Mandarin, and others.

It leads me to the question: do you reuse models available or develop all yourself?

We develop all internally. For example, we have developers graduated from the Charles University in Prague, who work on Czech support.

That’s an interesting story about computational linguistics in Czech, though I wouldn’t call it as widely spoken as others in Europe, Charles University has two or three groups which develop universal dependencies for the language, though some more representative languages have none.

Alright, what do you work on currently?

It’s mostly improving accuracy for automotive-related projects (for features like navigation, weather search, and more), which includes adding of data. Also embedding extensions, and for that case, the main challenge is the proper evaluation, which helps to avoid a degradation in quality. We worked on a hybrid solution: embedded NLU and cloud NLU. As we have some overlap, we need to split the responsibilities in a clear way. We need to work on confidence for prediction. We are facing AI as well, I mean complex request, e.g. a user could ask: find me a good restaurant and a parking slot around. So, a combination of intents brings an interesting challenge.

So, let’s come back quickly to language sources: do you plan to release the language resources to the language developers community.

I have no insight regarding this from the business.

It is a company which was bought by Microsoft, Maluuba, which developed an evaluation dataset, NewsQA. So, releasing an evaluation dataset can be a good step from Nuance. Thank you for the talk and I wish you good luck with a challenge of multiple intents.

Thanks, I was happy to share the knowledge and what we do.

Image 1 is published with an agreement of K. Kruchinina

Author: @yauhen_info for @nlprocby