Tuesday 11 October 2016

My Mother is a Text-classification Algorithm

Some time ago, whilst having an extended discussion of the type of tiny bananas we were eating, my mother took out a scrapbook to see if she had kept any newspaper clippings on bananas. She had made these clippings in the 80s - before I was even born. The book fell naturally open at a page about tomatoes, which she had partially cancelled out, and had annotated the rest with these mysterious letters written into the margin... Why had she made these strange annotations? She really could not recall or explain to me why she had done this...



A closer reading reveals that what she has done is to cancel out the non-factual portions (ie: the story about how the grower was "thrilled" and all that) and then she has given each sentence a category?

LET ME DECODE IT FOR YOU
H refers to History of Tomatoes
T refers to Facts about Tomato Varieties
CT refers to Methods of Cooking Tomatoes
GK... I'm not sure but they are all about the flavour and acidity of Tomatoes

MY MOTHER IS A TEXT-CLASSIFICATION ALGORITHM!

I suppose I am really my mother's child...



#latergram: Post has been backdated to 11 Oct 2016 which is the date I first observed this phenomena

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