Moshe Koppel | |
|---|---|
משה קופל | |
| Born | 1956 (age 68–69) New York, United States |
| Alma mater | New York University |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Computer science |
| Institutions | Bar-Ilan University |
| Doctoral advisor | Martin Davis |
Moshe Koppel (Hebrew:משה קופל; born 1956)[1] is an American-Israeli computer scientist,Talmud scholar, and political activist best known for his research onauthorship attribution. Together withShlomo Argamon and Jonathan Schler, he has shown that statistical analysis of word usage in a document can be used to determine an author's gender, age, native language, and personality type.
Koppel was born and raised inNew York, where he received a traditionalJewish education. He studied atYeshivat Har Etzion inIsrael, received aB.A. fromYeshiva University, and, in 1979, completed his doctorate in mathematics under the supervision ofMartin Davis at theCourant Institute ofNew York University.[2] He spent a post-doctoral year at theInstitute for Advanced Study in Princeton before moving to Israel in 1980. He has been a member of theBar-Ilan University Department of Computer Science since then.[3][4]
Koppel is best known for his research onauthorship attribution. Together withShlomo Engelson Argamon and Jonathan Schler, he has shown that statistical analysis of word usage in a document can be used to determine an author's gender, age, native language and personality type.[5] The findings regarding gender generated considerable controversy.[6][7]
In a string of papers, Koppel and colleagues solved many of the main problems in authorship, including authorship verification and authorship attribution with huge open candidate sets.[8]
In recent years, Koppel has published several papers insocial choice theory, offering (in joint work withAvraham Diskin) formal definitions of a number of concepts, including disproportionality,[9] and voting power[10] the definitions of which had been the subject of controversy. In related work, Koppel and colleagues have shown how thewisdom of crowds could be optimally exploited.[11]
Along withNathan Netanyahu and Omid David, Koppel showed that, using only records of games played by grandmasters, a chess program could be trained essentially from scratch to play at grandmaster level. A program designed by Omid David based on these ideas placed second in the speed chess competition in the 2008World Computer Chess Championship.[12]
Koppel has written two books on theTalmud.Meta-Halakhah showed how ideas formalized in mathematical logic could be used to explicate how the ancient Rabbis understood the unfolding of Jewish law.[13]Seder Kinnim is a mathematical commentary onTractate Kinnim, generally regarded as the most difficult tractate in theMishna.
Koppel wrote a monograph on the uses of concepts in probability theory for understandingRabbinic decision methods.[14] Together withEly Merzbach, he founded and edited the journalHigayon that is devoted to related topics.
Koppel's interest in the Talmud is occasionally reflected in his computer science research. He has applied his authorship attribution methods to proving that the 19th century Baghdadi rabbi known asBen Ish Chai was the actual author of a book for which he did not take credit.[15] Koppel also showed that the Harson collection (Hebrew:הגניזה החרסונית), a trove of letters attributed to early Hassidic masters were in fact all forgeries.[16]
Koppel has also developed methods for automated authorship analysis of biblical texts.[17]
Koppel has been active in efforts to draft a formalconstitution for the State of Israel, intended to replace the quasi-constitutional system ofBasic Laws from which the government derives its powers. He participated in meetings of theKnesset's Constitution Committee under the chairmanship ofMember of KnessetMichael Eitan during the16th Knesset and prepared the drafts for the committee's work on religion and state.[18][19] Subsequently, he co-authored a draft of a complete constitution proposed by theInstitute for Zionist Strategies.[20] Later, he and Eitan co-authored another complete draft of a constitution. He also wrote legislation passed by the Knesset in February 2011 that required full disclosure byNGOs regarding funding received from foreign governments.[21]In February 2012, Koppel founded theKohelet Policy Forum, a Jerusalem-based conservative-libertarian think tank.[22][23]
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