Re: Neural nets and spelling

[Ian Clarke]

> But I agree with you that we can get a useful subset of generalization
> from a few thousand examples, provided we have a sane network topology.  
> However, that's still a lot.

True, we could possibly make use of a web page to collect training data
though.
 
> The net is trivially not as general, because with a window, we will
> not be able to generalize beyond the window size.

Ah, I see now, we are talking about different things.  You are talking
about using the neural net to detect spelling mistakes, I am talking about
using them to translate words into their 'soundalikes'.  At present a very
simple algorithm is used to do this which involves removing vowels and
converting k's to c's or something like that.  A neural network should be
able to perform this task much better than this simple algorithm.
 
> First step is to collect a test body.  Then it's easier to see what obvious
> limitations any given net configuration will have.

I agree.  I think a webpage is a good way to do this.  Does anyone know
whether the hit-rate on the Aspell home page would be sufficient to do
this?  Perhaps Rob Malda of SlashDot could direct some hits our way for
this?

Ian.

__________________________________________________________________________ 
Ian Clarke                                    http://www.dcs.ed.ac.uk/~iic 
      `An intellectual is someone who has been educated beyond their 
                              intelligence'