ParsCit

ParsCit is an open-source reference string parsing package developed by Min-Yen Kan et al. It is based on the Conditional Random Fields (CRF) toolkit CRF++. It is being used by the well-known computer science digital library CiteSeer^x.

More Data vs. Better Algorithms

The recent blog posts from Anand Rajaraman that more data usually beats better algorithms (part 1, part 2 and part 3) reminds me of a talk by David Hand two years ago --- Classifier Technology and the Illusion of Progress. There has also been discussons on a this issue in Hal Daume III's blog post about Heuristics.

Laplacian Kernel, Resistance Distance and Commute Time

The Laplacian kernel for a graph is interestingly connected to the resistance distance (the total resistance between two nodes) and the commute time (the average length of a random walk between two nodes) over the graph.

Human Insight vs. Number Crunching

It is interesting to read the story This Psychologist Might Outsmart the Math Brains Competing for the Netflix Prize together with the book Super Crunchers. On one hand, human intuition is usually less reliable and less accurate than number crunching. On the other hand, a little human insight goes a long way, which may sometimes point out the right direction for number crunching.

Shogun

Shogun is a machine learning toolbox focusing on large scale kernel methods especially SVM. It supports

• state-of-the-art SVM implementations,


• various kernels including string kernels,


• a number of linear methods and


• interfaceing with Matlab and Python etc.