computer science

Ronald Kaplan

Ronald Kaplan is a computer science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Ronald Kaplan rather than just read about it. In short: Ronald M. Kaplan (born 1946) has served as a vice president at Amazon.com and chief scientist for Amazon Search (A9.com).

Key takeaways

Ronald Kaplan belongs to computer science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Ronald Kaplan to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Ronald Kaplan from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Ronald M. Kaplan (born 1946) has served as a vice president at Amazon.com and chief scientist for Amazon Search (A9.com). He was previously vice president and distinguished scientist at Nuance Communications and director of Nuance' Natural Language and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Prior to that he served as chief scientist and a principal researcher at the Powerset division of Microsoft Bing. He is also an adjunct professor in the Linguistics Department at Stanford University and a principal of Stanford's Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI). He was previously a research fellow at the Palo Alto Research Center (formerly the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center), where he was the manager of research in Natural Language Theory and Technology. He received his bachelor's degree (1968) in mathematics and language behavior from the University of California, Berkeley and his master's (1970) and Ph.D. (1975) in social psychology from Harvard University. As a graduate student he investigated how explicit computational models of grammar, particularly Augmented Transition Networks, could be embedded in models of human language performance, and he wrote the grammar for the LUNAR system, the first large-scale ATN grammar of English. He also developed the notions of consumer-producer and active-chart parsing. He designed (in collaboration with Joan Bresnan) the formal theory of Lexical Functional Grammar and produced its initial computational implementation. He developed (with Martin Kay) the mathematical, linguistic, and computational concepts that underlie the use of finite-state phonological and morphological descriptions. He helped to embed finite-state methods in a wide range of commercial products offered by Xerox and by several Xerox spin-off companies: Microlytics, Inxight, and Scansoft. In the 1980s he served as chief scientist of Microlytics. He holds 36 patents for inventions in the language technology field. He was honored with the 2019 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL). He is a past President (1979) and an inaugural Fellow (2011) of the ACL, a co-recipient of the 1992 ACM Software Systems Award for his contribution to the Interlisp programming system, and a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery. He is also a Fellow of the Cognitive Science Society. During 1995–1996 he was a Fellow-in-Residence at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences. In 2006, he was honored with a festschrift titled Intelligent linguistic architectures: variations on themes by Ronald M. Kaplan, published by CSLI Publications. He was awarded honorary doctorates from Copenhagen University in 2013 and from the University of York in 2019.

References

External links ACM Award for Interlisp [1] Intelligent Linguistic Architectures CSLI book about Kaplan's work.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Ronald Kaplan

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Ronald Kaplan claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In computer science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Ronald Kaplan before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Ronald Kaplan ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Ronald Kaplan

In research: Ronald Kaplan appears in computer science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Ronald Kaplan in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Ronald Kaplan is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1946 births, American computer scientists, Computational linguistics researchers, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Ronald Kaplan outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Ronald Kaplan in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Ronald Kaplan means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Ronald Kaplan out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Ronald Kaplan in simple terms?

Ronald M. Kaplan (born 1946) has served as a vice president at Amazon.com and chief scientist for Amazon Search (A9.com).

Why does Ronald Kaplan matter?

Because it connects several computer science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Ronald Kaplan?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Ronald Kaplan.