Subject: AIList Digest V5 #119

From: [email-masked]@vtcs1
Date: Fri, 15 May 87 04:08:16 edt

Date: Tue 12 May 1987 00:07-PDT
From: AIList Moderator Kenneth Laws <[email-masked]>
Subject: AIList Digest   V5 #119
To: [email-masked]
Reply-to: [email-masked]
US-Mail: SRI Int., 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA  94025
Phone: (415) 859-6467

AIList Digest            Tuesday, 12 May 1987     Volume 5 : Issue 119

Today's Topics:
  Application - Grammar Checkers,
  AI Tools - Academic Release of NU-Prolog System

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

Date: 8 May 87 08:32:10 GMT
From: [email-masked] (The Perplexed Wiz)
Reply-to: [email-masked] (The Perplexed Wiz)
Subject: Re: grammar checkers

I would rather see mainstream AI-related topics given space in AIList
rather than take up more space with yet another "grammar checker"
related messsage.  And while I accept the criticism of my comments in
the spirit of academic give and take in the exchange of ideas, I will
make, I hope, the final comment in this discussion and then consider
it closed for the moment.

I wish the two following commentators

        "Linda G. Means" <[email-masked]>
        [email-masked] (Gilbert Cockton)

had *read* what I said before they reacted.  I wrote:

>I think that if these style checking tools are used in conjunction
                                                ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
                                                        ***********

>with the efforts of a good teacher of writing, then these style
 ^^^^                ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

>checkers are of great benefit.  It is better that children learn a
>few rules of writing to start with than no rules at all.  Of course,
>reading lots of good examples of writing and a good teacher are still
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ *** ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
                                          ***
>necessary
 ^^^^^^^^^

I don't think that anyone would seriously suggest that these borderline
"AI" programs be used *exclusively* to teach children (or people of any
other age group) to write.

My thanks to Ken Laws for allowing this interesting little discussion
to take place here instead of forcing us to move it to AI-ED (where it
probably belongs, I admit).  Now, let's get back to mainstream AI :-)

Todd Ogasawara, U. of Hawaii Computing Center
UUCP:           {ihnp4,seismo,ucbvax,dcdwest}!sdcsvax!nosc!uhccux!todd
ARPA:           [email-masked]
INTERNET:       [email-masked]

  [[email-masked] has also been reprinting these messages. -- KIL]

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

Date: Fri 8 May 87 10:08:45-PDT
From: PAT <[email-masked]>
Subject: Grammar Checkers

On 'Style checkers'. Of course one shouldnt criticise to extremes, and
no doubt a competent adult would find these things useful sometimes.
That wasnt what I was complaining about: it was using them to
INFLUENCE children. The word was chosen carefully.  Marvin isnt going
to think that the thing should be taken as an authority on how to
write, or that in order to write well he should simply arrange that
the style checker doesnt find any problems.  But if they are used to
grade or influence the way children write in a school setting, that is
exactly what almost all kids will rapidly decide.  ( Unless an
extraordinarily good teacher is in charge, and maybe even then.  Just
think of the pressures on a teacher to come to rely on the programs
judgement, and on a pupil to take the machine as authoritative. The
machine finds no fault with Joes essay and complains about Bettys, but
the teacher gives Betty a higher grade..... )

Pat Hayes

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

Date: 9 May 87 18:17:44 GMT
From: [email-masked] (Gilbert Cockton)
Reply-to: [email-masked] (Gilbert Cockton)
Subject: Grammar Checkers

In article <MINSKY.12299573623.BABYL@MIT-OZ> [email-masked] writes:
>I agree with Todd, Ogasawara: one should not criticise to extremes.

What does this mean? I thought accuracy was the only goal in
criticism, not avoiding the ends of some quaint invented continuum.
Can we have a style checker which rates our extremity with marks out
of 10 (0 for credulous and 10 for rampant scepticism perhaps :-))

> I also used it to establish a "gradient".  The early
>chapters are written at a "grade level" of about 8.6 and the book ends
>up with grade levels more like 13.2 - using RightWriter's quaint
>scale.

How about MIT turning some of its resources towards VALIDATING this
quaint gradient? Do you seriously think there is any real computable ordering,
partial or otherwise, which can be applied to your chapters and
actually square up with any of our everyday evaluations of text
complexity? If so, where's the beef? How would US data square up with
European data. English teachers in the UK, for example, do not apply
unimaginative inflexible rules to students' writing, so it could be
that many educated English students will be turned off by an 8.6
introduction. Luckily we have not yet been carried away with the
belief that all complex ideas can have banal presentations without
bowdlerisation creeping in. Doubtless your style checker would ask me
to drop 'bowdlerise'? What should I have used instead, given that I
want an EXACT synonym with all its connotations? When I taught,
I would have advised my students to find a dictionary (many of them carried
them anyway - and I taught children from a wide range of cultural and
economic backgrounds). God knows what the French would say to a
mechanical style checker (a Franglais remover would go down well
though).

Finally, how on earth do these style checkers know which words will be
commonly understood? Surely they don't use word frequency in newspapers
or something like that? Does the overuse of a word in the media imply
universal understanding of/consensus on its meaning - eg. 'moral',
'freedom', 'extreme', 'quaint', 'seriously', 'inflexible' etc?
Does the limited use of a word in the media imply universal ignorance
- eg. 'ok', 'alright', 'balls', 'claptrap', 'space cadet', 'avid',
'stroppy', 'automaton'?

I would not regard any of the criticisms of style checkers I have read
as 'extreme' at all. The difference seems to be one of gross credulity
versus informed criticism. People who know nothing about good style
will believe all the things which the style checker hackers have MADE
UP - I defy any style checker implementor to point to a sound
experimental/statistical basis for the style rules they have palmed
off onto their gullible customers. Perhaps they did at least read some
books by self-proclaimed authorities, but this would only shift the charge
from invention to uncritical acceptance. I'd still be unimpressed.

This may sound extreme - that however is irrelevant. The point is,
am I accurate?. Note that my substantial assertions are few:

        i) Style don't compute. Verify by Chinese characters test
           between a style checker and the editors of the New Yorker
           (US) or the Listener (UK). Other quality magazine editors
           will do. Can you spot the editors' critiques?

        ii) The current 'reading age' metrics have no validity.
            They are bogus psychometric tools. Operationally I am
            saying that their will be no strong correlation (say r >
            0.9, p < 0.001) between the reading age of text and a
            reader's performance on a comprehension test. Allow the
            author to add a glossary and the correlation will weaken.
            People can learn new words you know.

        iii) Current measures of popular understanding of words are
             equally bogus and there is NO decent research to back it
             up. There has been some good work on correlating
             vocabulary with educational achievement, but this tells
             us nothing about the typical adult's vocabulary.

Every assertion above is falsifiable, so let's all forget about emotive
subjective concepts like extremity (= I disagree a lot and wish you hadn't
said that) and get back to an objective, informed debate. The motion
is:

        "All computer based style checkers can stunt the literary
         growth of their users"

A second order effect is that, although 1,000 chimpanzees could
between them type out the works of Shakespeare given enough time, they
would fail miserably if their output had to be passed by a computer
style checker.

        To be, or not to be, that is the question.
        >> Sentence starts with infinitive
           Sentence has no subject.
        Whether it is ....
        >> "Whether" may not be understood by people who just read
            comics. (? spelling mistake = weather ?).

--
   Gilbert Cockton, Scottish HCI Centre, Ben Line Building, Edinburgh, EH1 1TN
   JANET:  [email-masked]    ARPA:   [email-masked]
                UUCP:   ..!{backbone}!aimmi.hw.ac.uk!gilbert

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

Date: Thu, 7 May 87 22:56 EDT
From: Brad Miller <[email-masked]>
Reply-to: [email-masked]
Subject: re: grammar checkers

    Date: Mon, 4 May 87 12:18 EST
    From: "Linda G. Means" <[email-masked]>

      An aside to Ken Laws:

      You questioned whether the topic of automatic style checkers is
    appropriate to AILIST: is it AI?  I believe it is.  The study of
    computational stylistics is a difficult natural language problem
    with a long history. [...]

     - Linda Means
       GM Research Laboratories
       [email-masked]

Personally, I suspect the question is should the discussion be carried in
AIList or moved to NL-KR. NL-KR is, indeed, already picking it up; further
such things are directly in NL-KR's scope, and the idea of the list was to be
somewhat subtractive from AIList, keeping traffic on Ken's list a little
lower.

Brad Miller
[email-masked]
[email-masked]
[email-masked]

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

Date: Fri, 08 May 87 12:19:01 +1000
From: [email-masked]
Subject: Announcement of availability of new Prolog system

If the following announcement is suitable for posting in either of
these newsgroups, would you be able to forward it to the list ASAP.

Thanks, jas
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
John Shepherd
Department of Computer Science,
University of Melbourne,                CSNET: jas%mulga.oz@australia
Parkville, 3052,                        ARPA: [email-masked]
AUSTRALIA                               UUCP: ...!munnari!mulga!jas

Announcement:
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Subject: Academic Release of NU-Prolog System

Version 1.1 of the NU-Prolog system is now available for release to
academic institutions (schools, colleges, universities).

NU-Prolog is a second generation Prolog system which incorporates a
number of important advances in Logic Programming implementation.

NU-Prolog was implemented as part of the Machine Intelligence Project+
in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Melbourne.
It is the successor to Lee Naish's successful MU-Prolog system and
attempts to move Prolog closer to the ideals of Logic Programming by
allowing the user to program in a style closer to first order logic.
In addition, it provides substantial performance gains over interpreted
systems such as MU-Prolog.

NU-Prolog has the following features:

* compiles Prolog programs into machine code for an enhanced version
  of the Warren abstract machine (implementing the delay/coroutine
  style of programming of MU-Prolog)

* incorporates a database system based on superimposed codeword
  indexing which can store general Prolog terms in external databases
  for fast retrieval by NU-Prolog programs; the database system
  makes use of the superjoin algorithm to perform efficient join
  operations

* uses "when" declarations (the successor to MU-Prolog's "wait") to
  control the execution of NU-Prolog programs according to the
  availability of data

* implements a large set of built-in predicates, including many Quintus
  Prolog predicates; most DEC-10/Edinburgh/MU-Prolog library predicates
  are available through compatibility libraries

The NU-Prolog system contains the following major components:

* "nc", the NU-Prolog compiler

* "np", a simple interpreter-style interface which implements the
  standard Edinburgh Prolog style debugging facilities and has a
  sophisticated query language for accessing external database
  predicates

* "nac", a program for adding control information to NU-Prolog programs
  written in a purely logical style

* "nit", a program for reporting common errors in NU-Prolog programs
  (cf. Unix/C's "lint")

NU-Prolog runs under Unix System V and Berkeley BSD Unix 4.?. It has
been implemented on the following machines: Elxsi 6400, Vax 11/780,
Perkin Elmer 3240, Sun workstations, Pyramid 98x, Integrated Solutions
Workstations. The system comes complete with a manual and all source
code. The preferred distribution medium is 1/2" tape, Unix tar-format
at 1600bpi. There is a A$400.00 fee to cover distribution costs.

In order to obtain a copy of the system, you must first complete a
licence agreement with the University of Melbourne. Licences can be
obtained by contacting:

        NU-Prolog Distribution
        Department of Computer Science
        University of Melbourne
        Parkville, Victoria, 3052
        AUSTRALIA

or
        CSNET:  mip%munnari.oz@australia
        ARPA:   [email-masked]
        UUCP:   ...!munnari!mip (maybe, [email-masked])
        ACSnet: [email-masked]

The system will be demonstrated at the Fourth International Conference
on Logic Progrmaming in Melbourne later in May.

+ The Machine Intelligence Project has been
assisted in the development of NU-Prolog by:
the Commonwealth Department of Science,
the Australian Research Grants Scheme,
the University of Melbourne and
Pyramid Technology, Aust.

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End of AIList Digest
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