Remember those reading comprehension tests you took when you were younger? Well, they're back. But this time, you're going to do things the lazy way. You are going to use all that intelligence you've gained in school to create a computer program that will take reading comprehension tests.
Luckily for you, if the computer doesn't pass, it won't be held back a grade level, and neither will you. Question Answering is no easy task for a computer. State-of-the-art systems get at best around 40%-45% accuracy. You'll have to work hard to do well on this one, but you should have fun applying your creative genious.
Get Project Details.
| QA Resource | Location | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Basic System | http://www.cs.utah.edu/outreach/2003/C++ | Basic system in C++ |
| Basic System | http://www.cs.utah.edu/outreach/2003/Java | Basic system in Java |
| Frequently Asked Questions | http://www.cs.utah.edu/outreach/2003/faq.html | Answers to fequently (and sometimes seldomly) asked questions. |
| Non-distribution Agreement | http://www.cs.utah.edu/outreach/2003/agreement.html | You must sign and return this agreement in order to be allowed access to additional test questions. |
To help you develop your QA system, we will provide two sets of training files. One set is for training your initial system. The other is to test your system a week or two before the contest, to help determine how well your system is working as well as give ideas as to other improvements you can make. These files are password-protected and will not be distributed until you have signed and returned the non-distribution agreement (see above), at which point we will give you the necessary information for you to access the files.
Please close your browser when you are done to prevent others from accessing these data sets.
Below are some additional resources that should help you out.
| QA Resource | Location | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Eric Brill's POS Tagger | http://research.microsoft.com/users/brill/ | A part of speech tagger developed by Eric Brill while at MIT (go to the bottom of the page for the link) |
| Papers on QA Systems | ||
| Quarc (PDF) | http://www.cs.utah.edu/outreach/contest/2003/quarc.pdf | A paper by Ellen Riloff and Mike Thelen describing a QA system developed at the University of Utah. |
| Reading Comprehension (PDF) | http://www.cs.utah.edu/outreach/contest/2003/charniak-readcomp.pdf | A paper by Eugene Charniak et al. describing a QA system developed at the Brown University. |
| Deep Read (PDF) | http://www.cs.utah.edu/outreach/contest/2003/deepread.pdf | A paper by Lynette Hirschman et al. describing a QA system developed by the MITRE Corporation. |
| ML Approach to QA (PDF) | http://www.cs.utah.edu/outreach/contest/2003/ng-emnlp_vlc00.pdf | A paper by Hwee Tou Ng et al. describing a QA system developed at DSO National Laboratories, Singapore. |