Spotting Topics with the Singular Value Decomposition

Abstract. The singular value decomposition, or SVD , has been studied in the past as a tool for detecting and understanding patterns in a collection of documents. We show how the matrices produced by the SVD calculation can be interpreted, allowing us to spot patterns of characters that indicate particular topics in a corpus. A test collection, consisting of two days of AP newswire tra c, is used as a running example.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1998
• Where: EP
• Authors: Charles K. Nicholas, Randall Dahlberg
• Keywords: Electronic Publishing, EP 1998, Particular Topics, Singular Value Decomposition, SVD Calculation