Automatically spotting interesting sentences in parliamentary debates

https://fullfact.org/blog/getting_closer_automated_factchecking

by DanBC • 11 years ago

24 3 11 years ago

tuckermi• 11 years ago

Very cool! I would be interested in seeing more detail on Full Fact's implementation. Is there a technical implementation of the Decision Tree that is shown in the diagram? If so, it would be cool to learn a bit more about how it was encoded/represented.

idw• 11 years ago

We (I work there) don't have one yet but we wanted to get this line of work in the open asap.

The next steps are (glossing over enormous amounts of work casually): 1- Test that untrained coders have a high level of agreement in how they code different debates the same way 2- Do the same test with people who use Hansard (the record of Parliamentary debates) professionally 3- Iterate the set of categories if necessary to make sure they work as well as possible, given our two tests of (a) distinct and (b) useful categories 4- Code a set of training debates 5- Start developing a machine learning approach to automated coding

That said, I think there might be a shortcut available for at least some categories of applying some simpler heuristics.

So we're working to push this into a useful public system but it's likely to take money and/or expertise we don't have in house and so it will move slowly. In the meantime, we hope doing it openly might encourage others to get on board or explore this approach independently.

Our skillset will help a lot with getting to stage 4 and as we will be able to release the methodological bit and the training data hopefully that will encourage others to build on it.

sytelus• 11 years ago

This is a great topic. Some ideas to consider:

-Identify sentences where strong sentiments

-Identify first person sentences (I, me, my)

-Identify second person sentences (you, your)

-Identify sentences that indicates action that would be taken by person/group.

Automatically spotting interesting sentences in parliamentary debates

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