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This kind of latent variable model is not only highly unstable but also tends to tell you more about the person interpreting the results than the data itself, e
by dvse 16y ago
This kind of latent variable model is not only highly unstable but also tends to tell you more about the person interpreting the results than the data itself, e.g.: Chang et al., Reading Tea Leaves: How Humans Interpret Topic Models, http://umiacs.umd.edu/~jbg/docs/nips2009-rtl.pdf http://umiacs.umd.edu/~jbg/docs/nips2009-rtl.pdf
- catechu 16y agoWhile I agree that it can be unstable (inference can get stuck in local maxima), latent variable models like LDA can be used to rigorously evaluate textual categories (e.g. journal articles). We take for granted that the categories we set are "useful", in some sense, so it's interesting to see that quantitatively questioned. e.g.: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/11/12/1013452107.abstract http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/11/12/1013452107.abst... Also, for the curious, original paper on LDA: http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~blei/papers/BleiNgJordan2003.pdf http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~blei/papers/BleiNgJordan2003.pd....