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CSLI Calendar, 22 June 1998, vol. 13:38



   
     C S L I   C A L E N D A R   O F   P U B L I C   E V E N T S
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22 June 1998                    Stanford               Vol. 13, 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
                             ____________

	       ACTIVITIES DURING 24 JUNE TO 2 JULY 1998

WEDNESDAY, 24 JUNE
         4:15pm EE380: Computer Systems Laboratory Colloquium
                Gates B03 (NEC Auditorium)
                Summer Rerun
                Datamining the Web to create a Navigation service: Alexa
                (Sep 24) Brewster Kahle
                Alexa Internet
		http://www.stanford.edu/class/ee380/contents.html		
THURSDAY, 25 JUNE
        11:00am CCRMA Hearing Seminar
                CCRMA Library
                Mach1: Nonuniform Time-Scale Modification of Speech
                Michele Covell
                Interval
		Abstract below
                
        12 noon Psychology Talk
                Jordan 100 (Psychology)
                The Bible Code: How to lie, and detect lies, with
                statistics
                Maya Bar Hillel
                Department of Psychology
                Hebrew University of Jerusalem
                Visiting Professor at Columbia University
		Abstract below
                
         4:00pm Xerox PARC Forum
                George Pake Auditorium, Xerox PARC
                Rotary Rocket Company: Revolution to Orbit
                Gary Hudson, President and CEO
                Rotary Rocket
		http://www.parc.xerox.com/ops/projects/forum/
                
WEDNESDAY, 1 JULY
         4:15pm EE380: Computer Systems Laboratory Colloquium
                Gates B03 (NEC Auditorium)
                Summer Rerun
                Java SmartCards
                (Oct 22) Patrice Peyret
                SUN
		http://www.stanford.edu/class/ee380/contents.html		
THURSDAY, 2 JULY
         4:00pm Xerox PARC Forum
                George Pake Auditorium, Xerox PARC
                You are HERE.
                Why you will use GPS every day, everywhere
                Frank van Diggelen
                Magellan Corporation
		http://www.parc.xerox.com/ops/projects/forum/
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                                NOTES

Couple of events of particular interest to the CSLI community this
week and a puzzle.
                             ____________

                        CCRMA HEARING SEMINAR
                  on Thursday, 25 June 1998, 11:00am
                       CCRMA Library, The Knoll
        http://www-ccrma.stanford.edu/CCRMA/Events/Events.html

	 Mach1: Nonuniform Time-Scale Modification of Speech
			    Michele Covell
			       Interval

Temporal month continues at CCRMA with a talk by Michele Covell on how
to speed up speech, yet retain its comprehensibility.  In the past
weeks, we've heard about recognizing transients, and the perception of
auditory transitions by people with learning disabilities.

This coming Thursday we hear about how to speed up speech by a
time-varying rate.  There are lots of ways to change the rate at which
speech is played,without changing the pitch.  Usually people change
the entire utterance by the same rate.  But people have a hard time
understanding the result if you speed it up by more than a factor of
2.

Michele will be talking about the principles of speech
comprehension,and how that allows her to speed up some speech sounds
more than others.  Perhaps more importantly, how do you do it without
harming the speech comprehension?  And finally, how do you measure
speech comprehension over long utterances?

Michele Covell, Margaret Withgott, and Malcolm Slaney, "Mach1:
Nonuniform Time-Scale Modification of Speech," Proceedings of the IEEE
International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal
Processing. Seattle, WA. May 12-15 1998.
http://www.interval.com/papers/1997-061/

Abstract: We propose a new approach to nonuniform time compression,
called Mach1, designed to mimic the natural timing of fast speech. At
identical overall compression rates, listener comprehension for
Mach1-compressed speech increased between 5 and 31 percentage points
over that for linearly compressed speech, and response times dropped
by 15%. For rates between 2.5 and 4.2 times real time, there was no
significant comprehension loss with increasing Mach1 compression
rates. In A-B preference tests, Mach1-compressed speech was chosen 95%
of the time. This paper describes the Mach1 technique and our
listener-test results. Audio examples can be found on
			     ____________

			   PSYCHOLOGY TALK
		  on Thursday, 25 June 1998, 12 noon
		       Jordan 100 (Psych bldg)

			   The Bible Code:
	    How to Lie, and Detect Lies, with Statistics.
			   Maya Bar Hillel
		       Department of Psychology
		    Hebrew University of Jerusalem
	      Visiting Professor at Columbia University

The Bible Code, a best selling book published last year, gave much
publicity to little known but extraordinary article published in
Statistical Science, which seemed to offer overwhelming statistical
proof for the existence of a code in the book of Genesis, pertaining
to events which occurred millenia after it was written.  The editor
offered it as a baffling and challenging puzzle. Statistical analysis,
empirical experimentation, and other sleuthing methods, offer a
solution to the puzzle.  A fascinating case study in sociology and
philosophy of science, and in how to lie and detect lies with
statistics.

Room 100 is inside the Main Office of the Psychology Building (420).
The Main Office is to the left of the left entrance to the building.
                             ____________

				PUZZLE

On a 5 by 5 chess board arrange 5 black queens and 3 white queens so
that in the next move (and black is to move) a white queen cannot be
captured.
                             ____________

                             END MATERIAL

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