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CSLI Calendar, Wednesday, 18 June 2003, vol. 18:38
CSLI CALENDAR OF PUBLIC EVENTS
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18 June 2003 Stanford Vol. 18, No. 38
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A weekly publication of the
Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI)
Stanford University, Ventura Hall, Stanford, CA 94305-4115
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/
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ACTIVITIES FROM 18 JUNE 2003 TO 27 JUNE 2003
THURSDAY, 19 JUNE 2003
4:00pm PARC Forum
George Pake Auditorium at PARC
"Web Bloopers: Avoiding Common Design Mistakes"
Jeff Johnson
UI Wizards, Inc
http://www.parc.com/forum/
Abstract below
4:00pm Berkeley International Computer Science Institute
ICSI, Rm 607 (UC Berkeley)
"Microphone Array Processing for Robust Speech Recognition in
Noisy and Reverberant Environments"
Michael Seltzer
Carnegie Mellon University
http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/talks/
Abstract below
FRIDAY, 20 JUNE 2003
2:00pm Berkeley International Computer Science Institute
ICSI, Rm 607 (UC Berkeley)
"Risk Averse Reinforcement"
John Moody
Oregon Health & Science University
http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/talks/
Abstract below
THURSDAY, 26 JUNE 2003
all day CSLI Workshop
Cordura 100
"Barwise and Situation Semantics"
http://www.cs.tcd.ie/Tim.Fernando/sa-b.html
preregistration required
Information below
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Stanford Blood Center status: shortage of O-, A-, AB+, B+, and AB-.
For an appointment: http://bloodcenter.stanford.edu/ or call
650-723-7831. It only takes an hour of your time.
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PARC FORUM
on Thursday, 19 June 2003, 4:00pm - 5:00pm
George Pake Auditorium, PARC
http://www.parc.com/forum/
"Web Bloopers: Avoiding Common Design Mistakes"
Jeff Johnson
UI Wizards, Inc.
This talk is based on the presenter's new book: Web Bloopers: 60
Common Web Design Mistakes and How to Avoid Them (Morgan Kaufmann).
The book explains how to avoid common Web design errors, illustrated
with examples from actual websites. The talk asserts that the Web is
not commercial product quality, largely due to poor usability. It
describes a few bloopers in each category, and explains how to avoid
them. The talk is illustrated with many examples of bloopers in
commercially-available websites.
About the speaker: Jeff Johnson is President and Principal Consultant
at UI Wizards, Inc., a product usability consulting firm. He has
worked in the field of Human-Computer Interaction since 1978. After
earning B.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Yale and Stanford Universities,
he worked as a user-interface designer and implementer, engineer
manager, usability tester, and researcher at Cromemco, Xerox, US West,
Hewlett-Packard Labs, and Sun Microsystems. He has published numerous
articles and book chapters on a variety of topics in Human-Computer
Interaction and the impact of technology on society. He is also the
author of a previous book, GUI Bloopers: Don'ts and Dos for Software
Developers and Web Designers (Morgan Kaufmann).
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BERKELEY INTERNATIONAL COMPUTER SCIENCE INSTITUTE
on Thursday, 19 June 2003, 4:00 - 5:00 p.m.
Main Lecture Hall, ICSI, 1947 Center Street, Sixth Floor, Berkeley
http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/talks/
"Microphone Array Processing for Robust Speech Recognition in
Noisy and Reverberant Environments"
Michael Seltzer
Carnegie Mellon University
Speech recognition performance degrades significantly in hands-free
environments, where the speech signals can be severely distorted by
additive noise and reverberation. In such environments, the use of
microphone arrays has been proposed as a means of improving the
quality of captured speech signals. Currently, microphone-array-based
speech recognition is performed in two independent stages: array
processing, and then recognition. Array processing algorithms
designed for signal enhancement reduce the waveform distortion in the
speech signal prior to recognition. This approach assumes that
reducing the waveform distortion will necessarily result in better
recognition performance. However, recognition systems do not
interpret the speech waveform itself, but rather a set of features
extracted from the waveform. In this talk, a new approach to this
problem will be described in which the array processor and the speech
recognizer are considered two components of a single system, operating
with the common goal of improved recognition accuracy. In this
system, the goal of the array processor is to generated features which
maximize the likelihood of the correct hypothesis. This is
accomplished through the use of a new objective function which
utilizes information from the recognition engine itself to optimize
the parameters of a filter-and-sum processor. Using the proposed
approach, significant improvements in recognition accuracy over
conventional methods are achieved on microphone array tasks in a
variety of noisy and Reverberant environments.
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BERKELEY INTERNATIONAL COMPUTER SCIENCE INSTITUTE
on Friday, 20 June 2003, 2:00 - 3:00 p.m.
Main Lecture Hall, ICSI, 1947 Center Street, Sixth Floor, Berkeley
http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/talks/
"Risk Averse Reinforcement"
John Moody
Oregon Health & Science University
http://www.cse.ogi.edu/~moody/
A paradigm shift is underway in reinforcement learning (RL) research.
The dominant approach to RL over the past 20 years has been based on
dynamic programming, whereby RL agents learn an abstract value
function based upon expected discounted future rewards.
An alternative approach, Direct Reinforcement (DR), has recently been
revisited, wherein DR agents learn strategies to solve problems
directly. DR can enable a simpler problem representation, avoid
Bellman's curse of dimensionality, and offer compelling advantages in
efficiency. Moreover, by considering not just expected rewards, but
the distribution of rewards and associated risks, more robust policies
can be learned. I call this approach Risk Averse Reinforcement.
I review and contrast the major approaches to RL, present Direct
Reinforcement, describe an approach to Risk Averse Reinforcement and
apply these methods to asset management with transaction costs. In
this very challenging domain, DR agents seeks to discover strategies
that maximize profit, economic utility or risk adjusted returns. The
potential powers of DR are illustrated through an asset allocator and
an intradaily foreign exchange trader.
Other promising applications of DR and Risk Averse Reinforcement may be
found in robotics, autonomous vehicles, industrial control, and decision
support. As an example, I present preliminary work on an autonomous
gent that plays a simple competitive game.
About the Speaker: John Moody is a Professor of Computer Science at
the Oregon Health & Science University. His research interests
include machine learning, neural and statistical computing, time
series analysis and computational finance. He previously held
positions in Computer Science and Neuroscience at Yale University and
at the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara. Moody
received his B.A. in Physics from the University.
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CSLI WORKSHOP
on Thursday, 26 June 2003, all day
Cordura 100
A workshop co-located with CONTEXT '03
http://www.cs.tcd.ie/Tim.Fernando/sa-b.html
The workshop registration fee is $35
The late Jon Barwise was, among many other things, the first director
of the Center for the Study of Language and Information at Stanford.
His book with John Perry, Situations and Attitudes, appeared some
twenty years ago (in 1983), launching situation semantics, a semantic
framework that analyzes context in terms of situations.
This workshop provides a forum for works addressing the following
question: What problems, issues and/or insights connected with
situation semantics and Barwise motivate your research today? And how?
A special issue of Research on Language and Computation and/or Journal
of Applied Logic is projected, based on the workshop.
Anyone interested in attending the workshop is asked to email
Tim.Fernando@cs.tcd.ie (to give us an idea of the numbers to expect).
Tentative Schedule
9:15am Opening Address: John Perry (Stanford) TBA
10:15am Sun-Joo Shin (Yale)
"Diagrams and a Theory of Seeing"
10:55am Break
11:10am Robin Cooper (Gothenburg)
"Austinian truth in Martin-Lof type theory"
11:50am Jonathan Ginzburg (London)
"Situation Semantics: the ontological balance sheet"
12:30pm Lunch
1:30pm Alice ter Meulen (Groningen)
"Naturalized facts for counterfactuals"
2:10pm Sheila Glasbey & John Barnden (Birmingham)
"'In the murky depths of my mind': Towards a Situation-Based
Discourse Semantics for Metaphor"
2:50pm Break
3:05pm Satoshi Tojo & Ken Kaneiwa (Japan)
"Toward a proper semantics for the logic of occurrence"
3:45pm I. Emre Sahin & Varol Akman (Bilkent)
"In search of intended meaning: Investigating Barwise's
equation C_R(S,c)=P"
4:25pm Break
4:40pm Closing Address:Keith Devlin (Stanford)
"Extending Barwise and Perry's Relational Theory of Meaning"
Programme Committee
Varol Akman, Bilkent Jonathan Ginzburg, London
Keith Devlin, Stanford Alice ter Meulen, Groningen
Tim Fernando, Dublin Jerry Seligman, Auckland
Email workshop inquiries to Tim.Fernando@cs.tcd.ie.
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