Sunday, April 20, 2008

it's all about semantics

i'm in a very blissful state right now. i don't want it to end. what's even better is that i see no reason for things to really change, either. hopefully. i'm in a good state of mind, i have a lot for which to be grateful, and i just need to continue to stay true and put forth work, time, and care into everything that i am currently doing. everything's perfect:
  • i enjoy my daily routine, the classes i take, my commitment to the gym, and bringing my lil lunchbox to school each day
  • i'm a TA for 'computer architecture. i've never taught before, and i really enjoy the challenge. it's fun
  • this summer, i'll be working at MIT lincoln lab. it has 2,000 employees and an annual budget ~$600 million.
  • i am registered to play intramural softball on a UCLA comp sci team this quarter. i haven't played competitively played baseball since my high school days. i didn't really even workout during those days. i am looking forward to playing very much. i've been craving doing so for years.
  • i have an amazing, loving girlfriend, and i couldn't ask for anything more. this year, we'll spend our first Christmas together in indonesia. :)


also, for my NLP class (natural language processing; cs263a), we have 2 weeks to do a project. it's very open-ended and unguided. basically, we have to build software that can take a story as input and determine the underlying meaning of each sentence. it then has to construct conceptual dependency diagrams to represent these meanings (independent of any human language). then, it has to take questions, interpret the meanings of those questions, then output the answers in the form of english sentences. this last step is supposedly the hardest. the paragraph and questions we will be given follow:

Bob was famished. His fridge was empty so he got his car. Leones was crowded so the hostess asked him to share a table. Alice immediately introduced herself. He thought she was very attractive and they hit it off. When the waitress brought the menus she ordered the salad and he the steak. He asked her to come back to his place afterwards and she agreed. Bob was very hopeful. After the food came Bob said McCain should be president because government health care in England is bad. Alice got angry. She said he was too senile to be president. Bob felt bad. Bob's hopes were dashed.

Here are the questions your system should read, along with (reasonably likely) answers. Note that your answers need NOT be identical to those shown below.

Q1 Why didn't Bob eat at home? BOB'S FRIDGE WAS EMPTY

Q2 How did Bob get to Leones? BOB DROVE

Q3 Why did the waitress ask Bob sit with Alice? LEONES WAS VERY CROWDED

Q4 How did Bob know Alice's name? ALICE INTRODUCED HERSELF.

Q5 Why did Bob invite Alice to his place? BOB HOPED TO HAVE SEX WITH ALICE.

Q6 Why does Bob believe McCain should be president? BOB BELIEVES THAT ANY GOVERNMENT WILL RUN HEALH CARE POORLY AND THAT MCCAIN IS AGAINST THE U.S. GOVERNMENT RUNNING U.S. HEALTH CARE.

Q7 Why does Alice believe McCain should not be president? ALICE BELIEVES THAT ANY SENILE PERSON WILL RUN THE U.S. POORLY AND THAT MCCAIN IS SENILE.

Q8 What did Alice agree to do? ALICE AGREED TO GO BACK TO BOB'S PLACE.

Q9 Why did Alice become angry? ALICE DISAGREED WITH BOB ABOUT WHO SHOULD BE PRESIDENT.

Q10 What is the moral of this story? DON'T SAY ANYTHING CONTROVERSIAL WHEN YOU'RE HOPING TO HAVE SEX.

2 comments:

  1. Chris,

    congrats on the new girlfriend, the job, the routine.

    name one of your kids after me.

    ReplyDelete
  2. awesome... just awesome. and... so... are we hanging in the not so far term?

    ReplyDelete