Patent Application
20050071311
The present invention relates to newsgroups, and particularly relates to a method and system of partitioning authors on a given topic in a newsgroup into two opposite classes of the authors.
Information retrieval has recently witnessed remarkable advances, fueled almost entirely by the growth of the Internet or the Web. The fundamental feature distinguishing recent forms of information retrieval from the classical forms is the pervasive use of link information. More particularly, recent advances in information retrieval over hyperlinked corpora have convincingly demonstrated that links among hyperlinked corpora carry less noisy information than the text in the hyperlinked corpora.
Within a given topic in a newsgroup, postings on the topic and the links among the postings exhibit similar characteristics as the text in hyperlinked corpora and the links among hyperlinked corpora. A typical posting (i.e. a newsgroup posting) consists of one or more quoted lines, or text, from another posting followed by the opinion (i.e. more text) of the author of the typical posting. Such quoting text among postings in a newsgroup form a typical social behavior among the authors of the postings in the newsgroup. In particular, the social behavior or interactions among the authors has the following two components:
An interesting characteristic of many newsgroups is that people more frequently respond to a message when they disagree than when they agree. This behavior is in sharp contrast to the Web link graph, where linkage is an indicator of agreement or common interest.
A useful analysis of newsgroup postings is to partition authors of the postings into two opposite classes of authors. Prior art methods based on statistical analysis of text yield low accuracy on such datasets because of the following reasons:
In addition, such prior art methods for making determinations about values, opinions, biases and judgments purely from a statistical analysis of text are difficult to implement because such determinations require a more detailed linguistic analysis of content or text.
General Prior Art
The work of pioneering social psychologist Milgram set the stage for investigations into social networks and algorithmic aspects of social networks. There have been more recent efforts directed at leveraging social networks algorithmically for diverse purposes such as expertise location, detecting fraud in cellular communications, and mining the network value of customers. In particular, Schwartz and Wood construct a graph using email as links, and analyze the graph to discover shared interests. While their domain consists of interactions between people, their links are indicators of common interest, not antagonism.
Work on incorporating the relationship between objects into the classification process is related prior art. Chakrabarti et al. showed that incorporating hyperlinks into the classifier can substantially improve the accuracy. The work by Neville and Jensen classifies relational data using an iterative method where properties of related objects are dynamically incorporated to improve accuracy. These properties include both known attributes and attributes inferred by the classifier in previous iterations. Other work along these lines include co-learning and probabilistic relational models. Also related is the work on incorporating the clustering of the test set (unlabeled data) when building the classification model.
Pang et al. classify the overall sentiment (either positive or negative) of movie reviews using text-based classification techniques. Their domain appears to have sufficient distinguishing words between the classes for text-based classification to do reasonably well, though interestingly they also note that common vocabulary between the two sides limits classification accuracy.
Max Cut Problem
In graph theory, a max cut problem is known to be NP-complete, and indeed was one of those shown to be so by Karp in his landmark paper. The situation on the problem remained unchanged until 1995, when Goemans and Williamson introduced the idea of using methods from Semidefinite Programming to approximate the solution with guaranteed bounds on the error better than the naive value of 3/4. However, Semidefinite programming methods involve a lot of machinery, and in practice, their efficacy is sometimes questioned.
Therefore, a method and system of partitioning authors on a given topic in a newsgroup into two opposite classes of the authors is needed.
The present invention provides a method and system of partitioning authors on a given topic in a newsgroup into two opposite classes of the authors. In an exemplary embodiment, the method and system include (1) identifying all links among the authors, where each link represents a response from one of the authors to another of the authors and (2) analyzing the identified links, where the identified links are assumed to be more likely to be antagonistic links rather than non-antagonistic links. In an exemplary embodiment, the identifying includes (a) assigning a vertex of a graph to each of the authors and (b) assigning an edge of the graph to each interaction between two of the assigned vertices corresponding to two of the authors.
In an exemplary embodiment, the analyzing includes (a) creating a co-citation matrix of the graph, where the co-citation matrix includes the assigned vertices and the assigned edges, (b) setting a weighted edge with a weight of w for each set of two of the assigned vertices only if the number of the authors to whom both members of the set have responded is w, and (c) solving a min-weight approximately balanced cut problem on the co-citation matrix, thereby generating the two opposite classes of the authors. In an exemplary embodiment, the analyzing includes solving a min-weight approximately balanced cut problem on a co-citation matrix of the graph, where the co-citation matrix includes the assigned vertices and the assigned edges, thereby generating the two opposite classes of the authors. In an exemplary embodiment, the analyzing includes solving a max cut problem on the graph, where the graph includes the assigned vertices and the assigned edges, thereby generating the two opposite classes of the authors.
In an exemplary embodiment, the solving includes calculating the second eigenvector of the co-citation matrix, thereby generating the two opposite classes of the authors. In a particular embodiment, the solving further includes applying a Kernighan-Lin heuristic on the second eigenvector of the co-citation matrix.
In an exemplary embodiment, the method and system further include fixing the assigned vertices of the authors who are most prolific. In an exemplary embodiment, the analyzing includes (a) creating a co-citation matrix of the graph, where the co-citation matrix includes the assigned vertices, the assigned edges, and the fixed assigned vertices of the most prolific authors, (b) setting a weighted edge with a weight of w for each set of two of the assigned vertices only if the number of the authors to whom both members of the set have responded is w, and (c) solving a min-weight approximately balanced cut problem on the co-citation matrix, thereby generating the two opposite classes of the authors. In an exemplary embodiment, the analyzing includes solving a max cut problem on the graph, where the graph includes the assigned vertices, the assigned edges, and the fixed assigned vertices of the most prolific authors, thereby generating the two opposite classes of the authors.
The present invention also provides a computer program product usable with a programmable computer having readable program code embodied therein partitioning authors on a given topic in a newsgroup into two opposite classes of the authors. In an exemplary embodiment, the computer program product includes (1) computer readable code for identifying all links among the authors, where each link represents a response from one of the authors to another of the authors and (2) computer readable code for analyzing the identified links, where the identified links are assumed to be more likely to be antagonistic links rather than non-antagonistic links.
The present invention provides a method and system of partitioning authors on a given topic in a newsgroup into two opposite classes of the authors, those who are in favor of the topic (i.e. “for”) and those who are against (i.e. “against”) the topic. The typical social behavior in a newsgroup gives rise to a network or graph in which the vertices of the graph are individuals and the links of the graph represent “responded-to” relationships. Therefore, more particularly, the present invention provides a method and system of partitioning authors into opposite camps within a given topic in a newsgroup by analyzing the graph structure of the responses. The present invention utilizes methods of analyzing link graphs to perform the partitioning.
Quotation Links
The present invention establishes that a quotation link exists between person i and person j if i has quoted from an earlier posting written by j. Quotation links have several interesting social characteristics. For example, quotation links are created without mutual concurrence. In other words, i does not need the permission of j to quote. In addition, in many newsgroups, quotation links are usually “antagonistic”. In other words, it is more likely that the quotation is made by a person challenging or rebutting it rather than by someone supporting it. In this sense, quotation links are not like the Web where linkage tends to imply a tacit endorsement.
In an exemplary embodiment, as shown in
Graph-Theoretic Approach
The present invention includes a graph-theoretic approach for accomplishing the partitioning that completely discounts the text of the postings and only uses the link structure of the network of interactions. The graph-theoretic approach considers a graph
G(V,E)
where the vertex set V has a vertex per participant within the newsgroup discussion. Therefore the total number of vertices in the graph is equal to the number of distinct participants. An edge,
eεE,
e=(v1,v2),viεV,
indicates that person v1 has responded to a posting by person v2.
In an exemplary embodiment, as shown in
As shown in
Unconstrained Graph Partitioning
In an exemplary embodiment, the present invention uses unconstrained graph partitioning as its graph-theoretic approach.
Optimum Partitioning
In an exemplary embodiment, the present invention uses a form of unconstrained graph partitioning called optimum partitioning. Optimum partitioning considers any bipartition of the vertices into two sets F and A, representing thosefor and those against an issue. It assumed that F and A are disjoint and complementary, i.e.,
F∪A=V
and
F∩A=φ.
Such a pair of sets, F and A, can be associated with the cut function,
ƒ(F,A)=|E∩(F×A)|,
the number of edges crossing from F to A.
Optimum Choices
If most edges in a newsgroup graph G represent disagreements, the optimum choice of F and A maximizes
ƒ(F,A).
For such a choice of F and A, the edges
E∩(F×A)
are those that represent antagonistic responses, and the remainder of the edges represent reinforcing interactions.
Max Cut
In an exemplary embodiment, the present invention performs optimum partitioning by solving a max cut problem. In a particular embodiment, the present invention computes F and A optimizing
ƒ
as above, thereby including a graph theoretic approach to classifying or partitioning authors in the newsgroup discussions based solely on link information.
In an exemplary embodiment, as shown in
Min Weight Approximately Balanced Cut
In an exemplary embodiment, the present invention performs optimum partitioning by solving a min weight approximately balanced cut problem. In particular, the present invention performs spectral partitioning for computational efficiency reasons by exploiting the following two facts in optimum partitioning:
With such a newsgroup graph, the present invention can transform the max cut problem into a min-weight approximately balanced cut problem, which in turn can be well approximated by computationally simple spectral methods.
The min-weight approximately balanced cut approach considers the co-citation matrix of the graph G. This graph,
D=GGT
is a graph on the same set of vertices as G. A weighted edge
e=(u1,v2)
in D of weight w exists if and only if exactly w vertices,
v1 . . . vw
exist such that each edge
(u1,vi)
and
(u2,vi)
is in G. In other words, w measures the number of people that
u1
and
u2
have both responded to w can be used as a measure of “similarity”.
In an exemplary embodiment, as shown in
As shown in
In a further embodiment, the present invention uses spectral (or any other) clustering methods to cluster the vertex set into classes. In such an embodiment, the following are true:
In an exemplary embodiment, as shown in
Constrained Graph Partitioning
In an exemplary embodiment, the present invention uses constrained graph partitioning as its graph-theoretic approach. In an exemplary embodiment, the present invention partitions a newsgroup graph where the newsgroup has the following characteristics:
Constrained graph partitioning considers a graph G and two sets of vertices,
CF
and
CA,
constrained to be in the sets F and A respectively. In an exemplary embodiment, the present invention finds a bipartition of G that respects this constraint but otherwise optimizes
ƒ(F,A)
In an exemplary embodiment, as shown in
In an exemplary embodiment, as shown in
In an exemplary embodiment, as shown in
Partitioning
The present invention achieves the constrained partitioning by doing the following:
In an exemplary embodiment, as shown in
Conclusion
Having fully described a preferred embodiment of the invention and various alternatives, those skilled in the art will recognize, given the teachings herein, that numerous alternatives and equivalents exist which do not depart from the invention. It is therefore intended that the invention not be limited by the foregoing description, but only by the appended claims.
