New ASA Interest Group: Text Analysis

The ASA’s big tent grew bigger recently with the addition of the Text Analysis Interest Group (TAIG). The group was petitioned in the fall of 2018 and formally approved by the Council of Sections Executive Committee in March 2019.

The objectives of the interest group are as follows:

1. To bring together individuals and groups who have an active interest in text analysis, text mining, natural language processing (NLP), and related areas of research through their intersections with statistics
2. To promote research in text analysis and involve statisticians with a wide variety of backgrounds in such work
3. To promote text analysis as an integral part of modern statistics education, thereby increasing awareness of the tools and methods of text analysis in the statistical community
4. To contribute to the program of the annual Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM) and other meetings of the American Statistical Association and other professional organizations via formal representation in technical sessions and continuing education opportunities

TAIG serves as the bridge between the mainstream statistical community represented by the ASA and the growing field of text analysis, defined broadly (text mining, natural language processing, computational linguistics, web scraping, sentiment analysis, topic modeling, GAN text generation, automated translation, etc.). There has been a steady flow of presentations on text analysis and NLP at ASA conferences over the past five years. JSM, the Conference on Statistical Practice (CSP), and the Symposium on Data Science and Statistics (SDSS) have included at least a dozen presentations each year featuring text analysis methodology and/or applications.

TAIG has had a dynamic start. It held its inaugural meeting in Denver at JSM 2019, where about 30 TAIG members convened to introduce themselves and plan future work. At the meeting, the group elected Stas Kolenikov of Abt Associates as chair, recognizing his contributions to the successful launch of the group. He wrote the draft charge, set up the petition, collected the votes, and interacted with the Council of Sections throughout the group creation process.

In December of 2019, the group held an election for the first full cohort of officers. About a third of the group members voted. The 2020 elected officers for 2021 are as follows:

• Chair-Elect: Kelly H. Zou, Upjohn, Pfizer Inc.
• Program Chair-Elect: Jordan Rodu, University of Virginia
• Secretary-Treasurer: Carol Haney, Qualtrics

Looking forward to JSM 2020, TAIG will sponsor the invited session Statistics of Social Media, organized by Juha Alho of the University of Helsinki with presentations by Mike Kearney of the University of Missouri, Columbia, Emilio Zagheni of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, and Alho and discussion by Frauke Kreuter of the University of Maryland.

TAIG will also sponsor of a topic-contributed panel—Big Data, Technology Platform, and Digital Innovation with Measurable Impact—organized by Zou with panelists Siddhartha Dalal of Columbia University, Joseph Imperator of Upjohn, Pfizer Inc., Kolenikov, Lourenco Miranda of Societe Generale, Mike Porath of The Mighty, and May Yamada-Lifton of SAS Institute.

As with any ASA interest group, ASA members can join TAIG for free. Currently, there are more than 170 members. To join or learn more about the group, visit their ASA Community page.