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Daily Archives: November 13, 2017

Exploring the Use of Text Classification in the Legal Domain

Exploring the Use of Text Classi€fication in the Legal Domain, 25 Oct 2017. arXiv

“In this paper, we investigate the application of text classi€cation methods to support law professionals. We present several experiments applying machine learning techniques to predict with high accuracy the ruling of the French Supreme Court and the law area to which a case belongs to. We also investigate the inƒuence of the time period in which a ruling was made on the form of the case description and the extent to which we need to mask information in a full case ruling to automatically obtain training and test data that resembles case descriptions. We developed a mean probability ensemble system combining the output of multiple SVM classi€ers. We report results of 98% average F1 score in predicting a case ruling, 96% F1 score for predicting the law area of a case, and 87.07% F1 score on estimating the date of a ruling.”

The Paradise Papers in four data visuals

Data Driven Journalism: “Revealing 13.4 million documents and implicating more than 120 politicians and world leaders, the Paradise Papers have exposed the hidden happenings of the offshore industry, its users and operators. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) began releasing reports on 6 November 2017, drawing on nearly 7 million loan agreements, financial statements, emails, trust… Continue Reading

Social Explorer – New 2017 Election Results Now in Maps

Social Explorer, November 10, 2017: “Last week’s gubernatorial elections took the country by surprise, with two Democratic candidate victories that exceeded most predictions–a nine point win in Virginia (53.9 percent to 44.9 percent) and a 13.3 point win in New Jersey (55.6 percent to 42.3 percent). Find out more about the Virginia and New Jersey… Continue Reading

World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice

World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice. WILLIAM J. RIPPLE, CHRISTOPHER WOLF, THOMAS M. NEWSOME, MAURO GALETTI, MOHAMMED ALAMGIR, EILEEN CRIST, MAHMOUD I. MAHMOUD, WILLIAM F. LAURANCE, and 15,364 scientist signatories from 184 countries. November 13, 2017. Vol. XX, No. X BioScience. [Alliance of World Scientists] “Twenty-five years ago, the Union of Concerned Scientists… Continue Reading

NYT – She Warned of ‘Peer-To-Peer Misinformation.’ Congress Listened

Follow up to previous posting November 1, 2017 – Senate Intel Cmte Hearing – Social Media Influence in the 2016 U.S. Elections – see this article in the New York Times – “…For years, Ms. DiResta had battled disinformation campaigns, cataloging data on how malicious actors spread fake narratives online. That morning, wearing headphones so… Continue Reading

Making Sense of the Future of Libraries

Making Sense of the Future of Libraries – IFLA Journal, Vol. 43, No. 4. December 2017. “We examined five major projects conducted by library associations and related organizations between 2011 and 2016 that focused on the future of libraries and/or librarianship. We employed a sensemaking perspective as the foundation for our research. Through a sensemaking… Continue Reading

The State of Free Speech and Tolerance in America

Americans Say Political Correctness Has Silenced Discussions Society Needs to Have; Most Have Views They’re Afraid to Share “Nearly three-fourths (71%) of Americans believe that political correctness has done more to silence important discussions our society needs to have. A little more than a quarter (28%) instead believe that political correctness has done more to… Continue Reading

FBI Releases 2016 Hate Crime Statistics

“Today the FBI released Hate Crime Statistics, 2016, the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program’s latest compilation about bias-motivated incidents throughout the nation. Submitted by 15,254 law enforcement agencies, the 2016 data provide information about the offenses, victims, offenders, and locations of hate crimes. Law enforcement agencies submitted incident reports involving 6,121 criminal incidents and 7,321… Continue Reading

AP reports 91% of Trump court nominees are white – 81% are white males

AP:  “President Donald Trump is nominating white men to America’s federal courts at a rate not seen in nearly 30 years, threatening to reverse a slow transformation toward a judiciary that reflects the nation’s diversity. So far, 91 percent of Trump’s nominees are white, and 81 percent are male, an Associated Press analysis has found.… Continue Reading