Handbook of Latent Semantic Analysis (University of Colorado Institute of Cognitive Science Series)
Tom Landaueris a theoretical and applied cognitive scientist, with interests on the one hand in advancing understanding of how complex knowledge, such as language, is learned and used, and on the other hand in creating instructional methods and automated aids to speed and enhance knowledge acquisition and use. He led the brilliant team of young cognitive scientists at Bell Communications Research that invented LSA and, along with Susan Dumais, pioneered LSA’s interpretation and validation as a theory of verbal meaning. He is currently a Research Professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and Executive Vice President at Pearson Knowledge Technologies, a subsidiary of Pearson, the international educational publishing and assessment company. A 1960 Harvard Ph.D., he served on faculties of The Harvard Graduate School of education, Dartmouth College, and Stanford University, and was a Visiting Lecturer at Princeton University. From 1969-1984, he was a researcher and research director at Bell Telephone Laboratories and its successor, Bell Communications Research. Tom is a devoted proponent of the “Pasteur’s Quadrant” scientific method: taking problems from practical needs, finding solutions by empirical research and rigorous modeling, and testing theories and solutions by their effectiveness and completeness in solving the inspiring practical problem. (For example, LSA provides a rigorous theory of verbal meaning with wide applicability, but is unable to explain syntactic phenomena.) His research has almost always centered on some aspect of learning, from its physiology and biochemistry to the effects of practice schedules to mathematical theories, and to applications as diverse as marketing, children’s social development, human-computer interaction, and the specification of memorable telephone numbers. He regards LSA as by far the most significant accomplishment with which he has been associated.