Learning Agreement Example: Fill & Download for Free

“Adam stabbed Bob, and he bled to death!”Figuring out whether “he” in the above sentence refers to Adam or Bob, is a huuuuge problem in Natural Language Processing.It (and by it, I mean the problem) has a fancy name as well: Coreference Resolution. It is a very well-studied problem, and I’ll describe the first paper which took the machine learning approach to this problem, all the way back in 2001.On a high-level, the algorithm classifies any given candidate pair of words as either ‘Coreferential’ (meaning, refer to the same thing) or ‘Not coreferential’. For example, in the above sentence, <Bob, He> is coreferential, while <Adam, He> is not. The proposed classifier is a decision tree which uses the following features for each candidate pair:Distance: Number of sentences between the two words. (Intuition: Farther away the words, less likely they are to be coreferential)Pronoun: Whether both are pronouns, one of them is, or none.String Match: The overlap between the two words. (Intuition: “President Trump” and “The President” are probably coreferential.)Number Agreement: Whether both are singular, both are plural, or neither.Semantic Class Agreement: Whether both are of the same semantic class, if any. (“Person”, “Organization”, etc.)Gender Agreement: Whether both are of the same gender, if any. (“Male”, “Female”, “Neither”)Appositive: Whether both are appositives (Intuition: If a sentence starts with “The US President, Donald Trump said…”, then “President” and “Donald Trump” are appositives and are probably coreferential)...and a few more similar features.And the resulting classifier had an F1-score (a measure of accuracy) of ~60% (which was great at that time). Of course, over the last few years, this problem, like every other problem on earth, is being tackled by deep learning.There you go! Yet another example of a task which is intuitive even for a child, but extremely difficult for a machine to comprehend. Reminds me of:Humans: What do we want!?Machines: Coreference Resolution!Humans: When do we want it!?Machines: When do we want what?

"Concordance between subjects and verbs are essential for good grammar."––Abram Agnew ErsaDoes this quote seem grammatically correct to you?No?Good!But do you know why it's grammatically incorrect?While the author's sentiment is accurate, he hasn't actually made the sentence's subject and verb agree.All sentences require a subject and a verb. When you say "I am," you identify yourself ("I") as the subject and the act of being ("am") as the verb. Even a one-word imperative sentence (e.g., "Go!") has both a subject and a verb because the speaker is implicitly commanding someone or some group (i.e., the subject) to perform an action (i.e., the verb "go").With all sentences, if you can recognize the subject and know how to conjugate the verb, you cannot fail to produce subject–verb agreement examples.The challenge is learning how to recognize subjects and verbs in sentences that are complicated. Check out Scribendi's latest blog post for numerous subject–verb agreement examples for complex sentences.Happy reading!

Decentralized. Innovative. More entrepreneurial, more experimental, without so much bureaucracy. Lower prices. Higher quality. More customer orientation. Encouraging lots of new entrants. Removing artificial barriers. Removing licenses or regulations. Encouraging private certifications. More providers. Removing government cartels. More specialization, segmentation, and targeting. Encouraging lots of different types of services offered to different customer segments at different price/quality points. Encouraging varying private insurance for various segments.While we can’t know what millions of people peacefully cooperating might create within a free(d) market for health care, here are some brainstorms of a few things we can’t do today that might arise.Labor: Roll back all government professional licensing and regulation of doctors, nurses, psychologists, therapists, occupational therapists, physical therapists, nursing assistants, lab technicians, etc.Encourage private certifications, (E.g. AMA, the ANA, the AOTA, etc.), but remove government-enforced market cartelization by encouraging competing certifications at a variety of quality/price points.Example: John, after running free clinics in Africa, receives a certification from Medics Across the World and opens a clinic in a poor section of a city. He is not an AMA-certified doctor, but he provides first aid, child birth, inoculations, basic medicine, disease triage, etc. quickly and at low price right in the worst neighborhood. He coordinates with an AMA certified doctor for tougher cases.Example: Ahmid quits his job as a taxi driver. His MD from Croatia was not good enough for AMA certification, but it was for his Foreign Doctors Certification. He hangs his certification proudly and opens up his own medical clinic in his apartment. He charges quite a bit less than AMA certified doctors, but his clients, mostly newly arrived immigrants, find him more friendly and approachable, even providing great recommendations of next steps to further integrate into the community.Example: Vivian apprentices as an occupational therapist assistant for six years. Her employer sponsers her for a test. She receives an OTAA certification as an occupational therapist, a certification that requires neither bachelors nor masters degree — just proven skill under supervision and tested knowledge.Locations: Roll back all government licensing and regulation of hospitals, nursing homes, clinics, and health programs.Encourage independent certifications, from a myriad of groups (e.g., American Hospital Association, American Nursing Home Association), each having their own requirements and certification procedures, but allow anyone to open any type of clinic anywhere they want, as long as their bone fides are clearly described. Remove all one-size-fits-few government requirements in terms of training, privacy, equipment, beds, ratios, etc. Encourage insurance companies to differentiate by paying for alternative certification levels.Example: Sharon creates a Doula Center in a large, old house. She converts the 18 rooms into triples and quads for women who need care away from their homes. She trains numerous local women as apprentices and interns. Many of the births occur at the mothers’ homes, but higher risk cases occur at her Doula Center. Should a birth be too complicated, Joe is always on standby with his station wagon to drive to a near-by emergency center with which they have an agreement.Example: Gerald is an AMA-certified doctor, but works with a charity that provides once a week clinics in the basements of various churches. At one church, he works with six local women nurse-trainees. The local indigent line up. He sees them with the emphasis on speed and volume — oftentimes almost no privacy and in full view of one another. (For stripping, a curtain on rollers is available.) However, in this quick and dirty way, Gerald is able to consult with 300 patients on a Saturday. At a flat $20 per consultation, he earns less than he does in his regular practice, but he feels good bringing his AMA skills to the poorest.Example: John, American EMT certified, offers a mobile health truck that drives through the bowery on a set schedule. His clinic treats the bums in the street. When it rains, he has a canopy. He treats open sores and decaying teeth, and he urges other care if beyond his limited capabilities. His service costs each bum $5 in change, or an occasional bottle of rye, but he also has sponsors who, pleased with the volume of care he can take directly to the very neediest and least willing to schedule formal visits, are sponsoring two more trucks.Drugs: Roll back all government-required testing, regulations, and restrictions on drugs, instruments, medical devices — as well as patent monopolies.Encourage private certifications with varying degrees of assurances and leave it to insurance to guarantee efficacy and lack of side-effects. Allow new entrants to offer low priced alternatives.Example: Alice is dying from cancer. She has great pain and is undergoing chemo. She finds relief from pain, anxiety, and nausea by smoking marijuana. It is specifically REJECTED as effective treatment by the Jeff Session Drug Certification service, but Alice’s insurance approves it and pays for it — her insurance carrier believes that this cheap weed ameliorates many symptoms where more expensive treatments fail.Example: Sally suffers from a disease that has no medicines offered because it is so rare and formal testing is difficult and expensive. A lightly tested drug has been produced. Sally is at her wits’ end, and after talking to her doctor and her insurance carrier, she decides that the medicine is worth the risk.Example: Big Pharma Corp designs a new drug for hair loss. It keeps the chemical compound secret but the secret is eventually exposed and copy-cat pills quickly flood the market. However, Big Pharma continues to offer their pill at a 20% premium, differentiating its product by additives, by advertising, by distribution, and by its commitment to quality testing. They also offer guarantees.Example: Janice is quite concerned with having only “the best”. She pays for a premium service that authorizes only AMA, ANA, and OHA certified services.Insurance: Roll back all subsidies of, requirement of, regulations of, special treatment for insurance companies and insurance coverage.End any requirements that insurance companies must cover anything specific. Remove “pre-existing” requirements, gender requirements, racial requirements, well-visits, etc. Remove all price controls. End any special tax treatment (especially insurance offered through work expensed pre-corporate and pre-income tax). Allow new startup insurance companies to specialize in any type of specific insurance targeted to any segment.Example: Sidney and Connor find out that they are unable to have children. The $15,000 a cycle IVF treatments are not covered by their insurance, which offered them much more reasonable rates when they chose it. They must make the hard decision whether to try for a child, with the financial help of their friends and family. However, the other member who purchased this insurance are happy that their premiums are not raised in order to pay for Sidney and Connor.Example: Janet learns that her weight has crept over the 25% ideal weight limit of her current insurance carrier. She has 90 days to retest her weight, or she will lose this carrier. She explores daily runs versus going with Big Ladies Insurance.Example: Vegan Health Insurance offers a special insurance for anyone agreeing to live by their guidelines of smoke-free, daily exercise including yoga, no risky ventures, and vegan diet. Their small boutique coverage serves only .05% of the population, but they are one of the most profitable, and they are regularly rated the lowest cost carrier.Example: Muslim Mutual offers Islamic specific care for Muslim customers. They do not cover certain ailments — e.g., alcoholism — in fact, alcohol consumption voids their coverage. However, there are a number of ailments specific to their clientele that they focus on.Wealth Creation: Roll back other business licensing, regulations, and taxes that retard prosperity creation and poverty elimination.Allow citizens to accelerate wealth creation without constant government retardants. The greater the wealth, the more options for health care will be available and the greater opportunity for individuals to choose the level of healthcare they prefer.Example: Fred goes to an institutional school. The school does not like Fred’s energy for he will not quietly sit in his seat and fill out mind-numbing worksheets. They recommend drugging the child with strong psychoactives. Fortunately, there are many different type of schools, and in consultation with their insurance carrier, Fred’s parents transfer Fred to a school designed for boys.Charities: Roll back government coerced “safety nets”.Make it clear that charity begins with each citizen. Encourage private charities to crop up, offering different populations different types of services with different requirements and benefits. Encourage friendly societies and other voluntary mutual care associations. Encourage free people to work together to voluntarily care for one another.Example: John has regularly contributed to Greater Bay Charity but recently learned that they invested millions in high priced testing. John prefers offering more people basic care rather than fewer people expensive care. He changes his charity to John’s Mobile Clinics, whose vans he has seen providing what he considers to be sensible care for the most needy in the city.Example: Virginia has been using harmful drugs for years and develops a blood infection. She turns to the Summer Valley Charity for treatment. Summer Valley is willing to help Virginia but they have requirements: she must a) submit to a contraception injection preventing any child for five years; b) agree to drug rehab and continued testing; c) work in the clinic herself caring for other patients after two month of being clean. Sharon agrees, getting the treatment and the contraception, but she quickly reneges on both the drug rehab and workfare requirements. The next time that she needs medical attention, Summer Valley refuses her care. Another charity offers her fewer requirements but much lower care. Virginia has to make some hard tradeoffs for her life.Example: Angus barely scrapes by in his laborer job. He joins a laborer association, which gives scholarships to members’ children to go to low-cost medical training and come back to give the community ten years of heavily discounted services. Angus has high hopes that his children will be doctors.Tort Reform: Implement loser pays and counter-suits for nuisance cases.Tax Reform: Take government out of subsidizing, guiding, or approving health care or insurance by removing any preferential tax treatment.Example: Talia is changing her job. She owns her own health insurance, so that is not a factor in her next job. In fact, one prospective company has extensive health insurance, but Talia is quite concerned that she may get stuck at this company. She wants to be able to switch jobs absent health care. She grows suspicious of the company nd decides to join a different one that does not wish to entrap her with such golden handcuffs.Privatize Government Health Officials: Spin off all current government health bureaucracies into private companies offering consulting and certification services — in competition with other private companies.See related:If providers in a universal healthcare system refused to work at the fix price is forced labor justified?Are there free-market-based healthcare systems that work?Is healthcare a fundamental human right?Does the American Medical Association serve its members or the public?How does a libertarian society deal with the high cost of health education?What do libertarians think of NHS?Do libertarians want Cancer patients to take untested medicines?→ More essays on <Healthcare> by Dennis→ Return to the <Table of Contents> for Dennis’ Libertarian Essays