Connectionists: CFP: NIPS 2005 Workshop - Learning to Rank

[Shivani Agarwal]

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                          FINAL CALL FOR PAPERS

                        ---- Learning to Rank ----

                             Workshop at the
     19th Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems
                               (NIPS 2005)

                Whistler, Canada, Friday December 9, 2005

             http://web.mit.edu/shivani/www/Ranking-NIPS-05/

               -- Submission Deadline: October 21, 2005 --

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                   [ Apologies for multiple postings ]

OVERVIEW
--------

The problem of ranking, in which the goal is to learn an ordering or
ranking over objects, has recently gained much attention in machine
learning. Progress has been made in formulating different forms of the
ranking problem, proposing and analyzing algorithms for these forms, and
developing theory for them. However, a multitude of basic questions
remain unanswered:

   * Ranking problems may differ in many ways: in the form of the
     training examples, in the form of the desired output, and in the
     performance measure used to evaluate success. What are the
     consequences of each of these factors on the design of ranking
     algorithms and on their theoretical guarantees?

   * The relationships between ranking and other classical learning
     problems such as classification and regression are still
     under-explored. Is any of these problems inherently harder or easier
     than another?

   * Although ranking is studied mainly as a supervised learning problem,
     it can have important consequences for other forms of learning; for
     example, in semi-supervised learning, one often ranks unlabeled
     examples so as to assign labels to the ones ranked at the top, and
     in reinforcement learning, one often learns a policy that ranks
     actions for each state. To what extent can these connections be
     explored and exploited?

   * There is a large variety of applications in which ranking is
     required, ranging from information retrieval to collaborative
     filtering to computational biology. What forms of ranking are most
     suited to different applications? What are novel applications that
     can benefit from ranking, and what other forms of ranking do these
     applications point us to?

This workshop aims to provide a forum for discussion and debate among
researchers interested in the topic of ranking, with a focus on the
basic questions above. The goal is not to find immediate answers, but
rather to discuss possible methods and applications, develop intuition,
brainstorm on possible directions and, in the process, encourage
dialogue and collaboration among researchers with complementary ideas.

FORMAT
------

This is a one-day workshop that will follow the 19th Annual Conference
on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS 2005). The workshop will
consist of two 3-hour sessions. There will be two invited talks and 5-6
contributed talks, with time for questions and discussion after each
talk. We would particularly like to encourage, after each talk, a
discussion of underlying assumptions, alternative approaches, and
possible applications or theoretical analyses, as appropriate. The last
30 minutes of the workshop will be reserved for a concluding discussion
which will be used to put into perspective insights gained from the
workshop and to highlight open challenges.

Invited Talks
-------------

   * Thorsten Joachims, Cornell University
   * Yoram Singer, The Hebrew University

Contributed Talks
-----------------

These will be based on papers submitted for review. See below for
details.

CALL FOR PAPERS
---------------

We invite submissions of papers addressing all aspects of ranking in
machine learning, including:

   * algorithmic approaches for ranking
   * theoretical analyses of ranking algorithms
   * comparisons of different forms of ranking
   * formulations of new forms of ranking
   * relationships between ranking and other learning problems
   * novel applications of ranking
   * challenges in applying or analyzing ranking methods

We welcome papers on ranking that do not fit into one of the above
categories, as well as papers that describe work in progress. We are
particularly interested in papers that point to new questions/debate in
ranking and/or shed new light on existing issues.

Please note that papers that have previously appeared (or have been
accepted for publication) in a journal or at a conference or workshop,
or that are being submitted to another workshop, are not appropriate for
this workshop.

Submission Instructions
-----------------------

Submissions should be at most 6 pages in length using NIPS style files
(available at
http://web.mit.edu/shivani/www/Ranking-NIPS-05/StyleFiles/), and should
include the title, authors' names, postal and email addresses, and an
abstract not to exceed 150 words. Email submissions (in pdf or ps format
only) to shivani at mit.edu with subject line "Workshop Paper Submission".

The deadline for submissions is Friday October 21, 11:59 pm EDT.
Submissions will be reviewed by the program committee and authors will
be notified of acceptance/rejection decisions by Friday November 11.
Final versions of all accepted papers will be due on Friday November 18.

Please note that one author of each accepted paper must be available to
present the paper at the workshop.

IMPORTANT DATES
---------------

    First call for papers       --  September 6, 2005
    Paper submission deadline   --  October  21, 2005 (11:59 pm EDT)
    Notification of decisions   --  November 11, 2005
    Final papers due            --  November 18, 2005
    Workshop                    --  December  9, 2005

ORGANIZERS
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   * Shivani Agarwal, MIT
   * Corinna Cortes, Google Research
   * Ralf Herbrich, Microsoft Research

CONTACT
-------

Please direct any questions to shivani at mit.edu.

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