A revised algorithm for latent semantic analysis

The intelligent tutoring system AutoTutor uses latent semantic analysis to evaluate student answers to the tutor\u27s questions. By comparing a student\u27s answer to a set of expected answers, the system determines how much information is covered and how to continue the tutorial. Despite the success of LSA in tutoring conversations, the system sometimes has difficulties determining at an early stage whether or not an expectation is covered. A new LSA algorithm significantly improves the precision of AutoTutor\u27s natural language understanding and can be applied to other natural language understanding applications