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To: tdt-distrib@ldc.upenn.edu
From: Ralf Brown <Ralf_Brown@v.gp.cs.cmu.edu>
Subject: more probable misses on training set
Date: Wed, 09 Sep 1998 14:43:23 -0400

After looking at just a portion of the false alarms I get when running with
all January/February docs as both training and test data (FAs for two events
and 1/3 of a third one), I find the following probably-missed tags:

Event 1:
	APW19980108.0631	BRIEF
	CNN19980108.1600.1005	BRIEF
	ABC19980112.1830.0331	YES
	NYT19980114.0891	YES (maybe BRIEF)
	NYT19980115.0002	YES (maybe BRIEF)
	NYT19980115.0045	at least BRIEF
	NYT19980115.0901	YES (maybe BRIEF)
	CNN19980116.1130.1023	BRIEF
	NYT19980118.0099	at least BRIEF
	CNN19980120.1600.1032	BRIEF
	APW19980121.0631	BRIEF


Event 11:
	VOA19980104.2300.1338	at least BRIEF
	ABC19980128.1830.0095	BRIEF
	VOA19980128.2100.0592	BRIEF
	CNN19980129.0130.0327	BRIEF
	CNN19980129.0130.0392	at least BRIEF
	VOA19980129.2100.0036	BRIEF
	VOA19980129.2300.0013	BRIEF


Event 21:
	CNN19980203.1130.0955	at least BRIEF
	VOA19980224.2300.1482	YES
	PRI19980227.2000.0000	BRIEF


The following are more questionable, but need to be checked:
	CNN19980112.1600.1009	for Event 1
	VOA19980113.2300.0918	for Event 1
	VOA19980203.2100.2469	for Event 21


Once again, roughly 1/6 of the supposed false alarms that I checked were in
fact (in my opinion) missed tags, and I'm sure it isn't a definitive list of
misses, since the tracker probably failed to detect some on-topic stories.
These labeling misses significantly affect Ctrack, since the cost function
is essentially equal to the false alarm rate and a missed label is all the
more likely to show up as a false alarm the better the tracker is. There's
also the more indirect harm from having positive training instances labeled
as negative instances, which may cause the tracker to make unnecessarily-
fine distinctions.

[To forestall one possible objection: I do realize that a number of the
stories I've listed in this and prior messages are MISC rather than NEWS,
but if we're supposed to track everything, I feel that everything should
be labeled as well. That also permits further experiments where MISC
articles are scored and/or used for training.]

Ralf
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Last updated Fri Sep 11 13:52:54 1998