What’s in a Domain? Multi-Domain Learning for Multi-Attribute Data

Mahesh Joshi, Mark Dredze, William W. Cohen and Carolyn P. Rose

Multi-Domain learning assumes that a single metadata attribute is used in order to divide the data into so-called domains. However, real-world datasets often have multiple metadata attributes that can divide the data into domains. It is not always apparent which single attribute will lead to the best domains, and more than one attribute might impact classification. We propose extensions to two multi-domain learning techniques for our multi-attribute setting, enabling them to simultaneously learn from several metadata attributes. Experimentally, they outperform the multi-domain learning baseline, even when it selects the single “best” attribute.