Testing Hypotheses of Covariate Effects on Topics of Discourse

Abstract: We introduce an approach to topic modelling with document-level covariates that remains tractable in the face of large text corpora. This is achieved by de-emphasizing the role of parameter estimation in an underlying probabilistic model, assuming instead that the data come from a fixed but unknown distribution whose statistical functionals are of interest. We propose combining a convex formulation of non-negative matrix factorization with standard regression techniques as a fast-to-compute and useful estimate of such a functional. Uncertainty quantification can then be achieved by reposing non-parametric resampling methods on top of this scheme. This is in contrast to popular topic modelling paradigms, which posit a complex and often hard-to-fit generative model of the data. We argue that the simple, non-parametric approach advocated here is faster, more interpretable, and enjoys better inferential justification than said generative models. Finally, our methods are demonstrated with an application analysing covariate effects on discourse of flavours attributed to Canadian beers.