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Using N-grams to identify mathematical topics in MXit lingo

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SAICSIT '11: Proceedings of the South African Institute of Computer Scientists and Information Technologists Conference on Knowledge, Innovation and Leadership in a Diverse, Multidisciplinary Environment

Pages 40 - 48

https://doi.org/10.1145/2072221.2072227

Published: 03 October 2011 Publication History

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Abstract

N-grams are used to quantify the similarity between two documents or the similarity between two collections of words. This paper shows how N-grams of length 3 and N-grams of length 4 both coupled with text preprocessing (including stop word removal and stemming according to MXit spelling conventions) can be used to categorize very short mathematical conversations conducted in MXit lingo into broad mathematical groups such as algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and calculus. MXit lingo is an abbreviated form of written English which children, teenagers and young adults utilise when communicating using the popular MXit chat mechanism over cell phones. Conversations from the "Dr Math" project were used for this analysis. "Dr Math" is a mathematics tutoring service which links primary and secondary school pupils to tutors from local universities. The tutors assist the pupils with their mathematics homework.

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Cited By

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Butgereit LBotha RMcNeill JBradshaw K(2013)A comparison of different calculations for N-gram similarities in a spelling corrector for mobile instant messaging languageProceedings of the South African Institute for Computer Scientists and Information Technologists Conference10.1145/2513456.2513458(1-7)Online publication date: 7-Oct-2013
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2513456.2513458

Index Terms

Using N-grams to identify mathematical topics in MXit lingo
1. Theory of computation
  1. Design and analysis of algorithms

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Published In

October 2011

352 pages

ISBN:9781450308786

DOI:10.1145/2072221

Conference Chair:
Irwin Brown
University of Cape Town
,
Program Chairs:
Kosheek Sewchurran
University of Cape Town
,
Hussein Suleman
University of Cape Town

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 03 October 2011

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SAICSIT '11

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SAICSIT

SAICSIT '11: South African Institute of Computer Scientists and Information Technologists Conference

October 3 - 5, 2011

Cape Town, South Africa

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Overall Acceptance Rate 187 of 439 submissions, 43%

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Butgereit LBotha RMcNeill JBradshaw K(2013)A comparison of different calculations for N-gram similarities in a spelling corrector for mobile instant messaging languageProceedings of the South African Institute for Computer Scientists and Information Technologists Conference10.1145/2513456.2513458(1-7)Online publication date: 7-Oct-2013
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2513456.2513458

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