NSF Research Awards Abstracts 1990-2003

Data Type

text and tabular

Abstract

This data set consists of (a) 129,000 abstracts describing NSF awards for basic research, (b) bag-of-word data files extracted from the abstracts, (c) a list of words for indexing the bag-of-word data.

Sources

Original Owner and Donor

Abstracts provided by
Michael J. Pazzani
ICS Department, School of Computer Science, UCI, Irvine CA, 92697, USA
pazzani@ics.uci.edu

Bag-of-word data provided by
Amnon Meyers
ICS Department, School of Computer Science, UCI, Irvine CA, 92697, USA
ameyers@ics.uci.edu
Date Donated: November 18, 2003

Data Characteristics

The abstracts, one per file, were furnished by the NSF (National Science Foundation). A sample abstract is shown in the next section.

The bag-of-word data was produced by automatically processing the abstracts with a text analyzer called NSFAbst, built using VisualText. While most fields of the output are very accurate, the authors were not extracted from the Investigator: field with 100% accuracy, due to wide variability in that field.

The word list came from a separate process, and may not include all the words of interest in the abstracts.

Data Format

Abstracts

A sample abstract is shown below:
==================================================================
Title       : CAREER: Markov Chain Monte Carlo Methods
Type: Award
NSF Org     : CCR
Latest
Amendment
Date        : May 5, 2003
File        : a0237834

Award Number: 0237834
Award Instr.: Continuing grant
Prgm Manager: Ding-Zhu Du
          CCR  DIV OF COMPUTER-COMMUNICATIONS RESEARCH
          CSE  DIRECT FOR COMPUTER & INFO SCIE & ENGINR
Start Date  : August 1,  2003
Expires     : May 31,  2008 (Estimated)
Expected
Total Amt.  : $400000             (Estimated)
Investigator: Eric Vigoda vigoda@cs.uchicago.edu  (Principal Investigator current)
Sponsor     : University of Chicago
          5801 South Ellis Avenue
          Chicago, IL  606371404    773/702-8602

NSF Program : 2860      THEORY OF COMPUTING
Fld Applictn:
Program Ref : 1045,1187,9216,HPCC,
Abstract    :

     Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods are an important algorithmic
     device in a variety of fields.  This project studies techniques for rigorous
     analysis of the convergence properties of Markov chains.   The emphasis is on
     refining probabilistic, analytic and combinatorial tools (such as coupling,
     log-Sobolev, and canonical paths) to improve existing algorithms and develop
     efficient algorithms for important open problems.

     Problems arising in
     computer science, discrete mathematics, and physics are of particular interest,
     e.g., generating random colorings and independent sets of bounded-degree
     graphs, approximating the permanent, estimating the volume of a convex body,
     and sampling contingency tables.  The project also studies inherent connections
     between phase transitions in statistical physics models and convergence
     properties of associated Markov chains.

     The investigator is developing a
     new graduate course on MCMC methods.
==================================================================

Bag-of-Word Data

The bag-of-word data consists of 2-column and 3-column files, as follows.
idnsfid.txt    = docid  NSF_doc_id     (e.g., 1 a9000006)
docauths.txt   = docid  Author_string  (e.g., 7 Brian Fiedler)
doctitles.txt  = docid  Title_string   (e.g., 9 Ship Operations)
docwords.txt   = docid  wordid freq    (e.g., 1 9792 1)

Definitions:

docid         = a counter generated for each document as it was processed.
wordid        = the id for a word, as obtained from the word.txt file.
freq          = the number of times that the word (wordid) appears in the file (docid).
NSF_doc_id    = the value taken from the File: field of an NSF awards file.
Title_String  = the value of the Title: field of an NSF awards file.
Author_String = derived from the Investigator: field when feasible.


The UCI KDD Archive
Information and Computer Science
University of California, Irvine
Irvine, CA 92697-3425
Last modified: November 18, 2003