title: Practical feature subset selection for machine learning

authors: Hall, Mark A.

subjects: computer science

abstract: Machine learning algorithms automatically extract knowledge from machine readable information. Unfortunately, their success is usually dependant on the quality of the data  that they operate on. If the data is inadequate, or contains extraneous and irrelevant information, machine learning algorithms may produce less accurate and less understandable results, or may fail to discover anything of use at all. Feature subset selection can result in enhanced performance, a reduced hypothesis search space, and, in some cases, reduced storage requirement. This paper describes a new feature selection algorithm that uses a correlation based heuristic to determine the “goodness” of feature subsets, and evaluates its effectiveness with three common machine learning algorithms. Experiments using a number of standard machine learning data sets are presented. Feature subset selection gave significant improvement for all three algorithms

text: Practical feature subset selection for machine learning Machine learning algorithms automatically extract knowledge from machine readable information. Unfortunately, their success is usually dependant on the quality of the data  that they operate on. If the data is inadequate, or contains extraneous and irrelevant information, machine learning algorithms may produce less accurate and less understandable results, or may fail to discover anything of use at all. Feature subset selection can result in enhanced performance, a reduced hypothesis search space, and, in some cases, reduced storage requirement. This paper describes a new feature selection algorithm that uses a correlation based heuristic to determine the “goodness” of feature subsets, and evaluates its effectiveness with three common machine learning algorithms. Experiments using a number of standard machine learning data sets are presented. Feature subset selection gave significant improvement for all three algorithms

year: 1998

title: When one of them is in our place: Early childhood settings as spaces of resistance

authors: Arndt, Sonja Kathrina

subjects: foreigner

abstract: When they come to us in our place, what happens, for them and for us? This article investigates conceptions of Otherness through the story of an immigrant early childhood teacher, seen as the stranger, foreigner, who comes to our place, our early childhood setting. It provokes and challenges orientations, towards teacher-foreigners in a teaching team, towards difference and towards considerations of our place, as culturally drenched in local knowledges, values and practices, as relationally complex and as a possible site of resistance. This article disturbs and complicates dominant constructions of the Other by positing teacher-subjects through a Kristevan lens as dynamic and constantly evolving. Tracings of Kristeva’s philosophical influences and treatments of Otherness help to present entangled historicised, contemporary and future insights into the recognition and marginalisation of teacher-foreigners. Finally, the teacher’s story becomes further challenged with Kristeva’s suggestion that each one of us is a foreigner inside, Other to ourselves, when they come to us, in our place.

text: When one of them is in our place: Early childhood settings as spaces of resistance When they come to us in our place, what happens, for them and for us? This article investigates conceptions of Otherness through the story of an immigrant early childhood teacher, seen as the stranger, foreigner, who comes to our place, our early childhood setting. It provokes and challenges orientations, towards teacher-foreigners in a teaching team, towards difference and towards considerations of our place, as culturally drenched in local knowledges, values and practices, as relationally complex and as a possible site of resistance. This article disturbs and complicates dominant constructions of the Other by positing teacher-subjects through a Kristevan lens as dynamic and constantly evolving. Tracings of Kristeva’s philosophical influences and treatments of Otherness help to present entangled historicised, contemporary and future insights into the recognition and marginalisation of teacher-foreigners. Finally, the teacher’s story becomes further challenged with Kristeva’s suggestion that each one of us is a foreigner inside, Other to ourselves, when they come to us, in our place.

year: 2016

title: Te ahi tawhito, te ahi tipua, te ahi nā Mahuika: Re-igniting native women’s ceremony

authors: Murphy, Ngahuia Aroha Grace

subjects: Native women's ceremony

abstract: This research examines the multiple ways in which Māori, and Hawai’ian and Native American women, are re-activating feminine ceremonial forms and recovering sacred relationships with customary feminine deities. Attention is focused on the creation of personal ritual practices that respond to contemporary decolonising and ecological contexts.
A mana wahine theoretical and methodological framework motivated by emancipatory agendas that seek to facilitate transformation is used. Key to mana wahine projects is the creation of space for Native women to define themselves and their own stories and knowledges. This is important because Native women’s voices, knowledge and ritual histories continue to be marginalised. Furthermore, debased colonial renditions of femininity, which have been reproduced, perpetuate patriarchal and colonial politics that engender discord in Native communities today.  
The study used a suite of complimentary methods to engage 45 Native women and men. Interviews and kōrero (discussion), ceremony, mana wahine wānanga (women’s sacred learning space), Native sacred site visits, solicited journals, collaboration in ritual theatre productions, and analysis of mana wahine artworks as discursive texts were employed to gather stories of spiritual continuation that are unique and largely unchartered in academia. 
The empirical material is organised around four themes in four different chapters. The first of these empirical chapters re-interprets colonial ethnographic material alongside karakia (incantations), mōteatea (songs), cosmological and tribal stories, to reveal bold examples of Māori female ritual leadership. The second empirical chapter comprises an analysis of key colonial processes that have attempted to erase Native women’s ritual ontologies and the strident expressions of Native women’s resistance to colonial imperatives. The third empirical chapter investigates the multiple channels through which Native women are restoring their ceremonial lives. The fourth chapter investigates rerenga atua (menstruation) rituals that celebrate the Native feminine body as a cosmological site of communion with feminine deities. 
The rich weave of Native women’s stories of ceremony, old and new, threads into decolonising Indigenous scholarship around the world that also seeks to recover the sacred feminine as a key site of Native sovereignty. These discussions reveal a self-renewing Native belief system based on vibrant and evolving rituals that respond directly to current socio-political, spiritual and ecological realities.

text: Te ahi tawhito, te ahi tipua, te ahi nā Mahuika: Re-igniting native women’s ceremony This research examines the multiple ways in which Māori, and Hawai’ian and Native American women, are re-activating feminine ceremonial forms and recovering sacred relationships with customary feminine deities. Attention is focused on the creation of personal ritual practices that respond to contemporary decolonising and ecological contexts.
A mana wahine theoretical and methodological framework motivated by emancipatory agendas that seek to facilitate transformation is used. Key to mana wahine projects is the creation of space for Native women to define themselves and their own stories and knowledges. This is important because Native women’s voices, knowledge and ritual histories continue to be marginalised. Furthermore, debased colonial renditions of femininity, which have been reproduced, perpetuate patriarchal and colonial politics that engender discord in Native communities today.  
The study used a suite of complimentary methods to engage 45 Native women and men. Interviews and kōrero (discussion), ceremony, mana wahine wānanga (women’s sacred learning space), Native sacred site visits, solicited journals, collaboration in ritual theatre productions, and analysis of mana wahine artworks as discursive texts were employed to gather stories of spiritual continuation that are unique and largely unchartered in academia. 
The empirical material is organised around four themes in four different chapters. The first of these empirical chapters re-interprets colonial ethnographic material alongside karakia (incantations), mōteatea (songs), cosmological and tribal stories, to reveal bold examples of Māori female ritual leadership. The second empirical chapter comprises an analysis of key colonial processes that have attempted to erase Native women’s ritual ontologies and the strident expressions of Native women’s resistance to colonial imperatives. The third empirical chapter investigates the multiple channels through which Native women are restoring their ceremonial lives. The fourth chapter investigates rerenga atua (menstruation) rituals that celebrate the Native feminine body as a cosmological site of communion with feminine deities. 
The rich weave of Native women’s stories of ceremony, old and new, threads into decolonising Indigenous scholarship around the world that also seeks to recover the sacred feminine as a key site of Native sovereignty. These discussions reveal a self-renewing Native belief system based on vibrant and evolving rituals that respond directly to current socio-political, spiritual and ecological realities.

year: 2019