Natural Language Processing

July 19, 2013 to August 16, 2013 July 18, 2014 to August 15, 2014

Natural Language Processing

taught by Nitin Indurkhya

This course is designed to give you an introduction to the algorithms, techniques and software used in natural language processing (NLP). Their use will be illustrated by reference to existing applications, particularly speech understanding, information retrieval, machine translation and information extraction. The course will try to make clear both the capabilities and the limitations of these applications.

For real-world applications, NLP draws heavily on work in computational linguistics and artificial intelligence. The course textbook will provide the necessary background in linguistics and computer science for those students who need it. In this course only a portion of the textbook will be covered, however anyone going on to do further studies in NLP will find the textbook a very useful reference.

At the completion of the course, a student should be able to read the description of an NLP application and have an idea of how it is done, what the likely weaknesses are, and often which claims are probably exaggerated. The course also prepares students to do further work in NLP by giving them a good grasp of the basic concepts.

This course is a core requirement or elective in the following Program(s) in Analytics and Statistical Studies (PASS):

SESSION 1: Introduction of NLP and Word-level Analysis

• Overview of NLP
• Text Preprocessing
• Corpus Creation
• Fundamental Statistical Techniques in NLP (review)
• Lexical Analysis

SESSION 2: Sentence-level Processing

• Part-of-Speech Tagging
• Context-Free Grammars (CFG)
• Parsing of sentences with CFG
• Statistical parsing methods

SESSION 3: Semantics

• Representation of Meaning
• Semantic Analysis
• Word Sense Disambiguation

SESSION 4: Applications of NLP

• Information Retrieval
• Information Extraction
• Speech Recognition Systems
• Natural Language Generation

HOMEWORK:

Homework in this course consists of short answer questions to test concepts.

Natural Language Processing

Add $50 service fee if you require a prior invoice, or if you need to submit a purchase order or voucher, pay by wire transfer or EFT, or refund and reprocess a prior payment. Please use this printed registration form, for these and other special orders.

Courses may fill up at any time and registrations are processed in the order in which they are received. Your registration will be confirmed for the first available course date, unless you specify otherwise. Those registering for multiple courses, Statistics.com's PASS students, and those affiliated with other academic institutions may be entitled to tuition discounts; read more.

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Natural Language Processing

taught by Nitin Indurkhya

Analysts, researchers and managers who deal with, or might need to deal with, NLP systems at a variety of levels - needs assessment, design, deployment and operation.

Intermediate

This course takes place online at the Institute for 4 weeks. During each course week, you participate at times of your own choosing - there are no set times when you must be online. Course participants will be given access to a private discussion board. In class discussions led by the instructor, you can post questions, seek clarification, and interact with your fellow students and the instructor.

The course typically requires 15 hours per week. At the beginning of each week, you receive the relevant material, in addition to answers to exercises from the previous session. During the week, you are expected to go over the course materials, work through exercises, and submit answers. Discussion among participants is encouraged. The instructor will provide answers and comments, and at the end of the week, you will receive individual feedback on your homework answers.

1. You may be interested only in learning the material presented, and not be concerned with grades or a record of completion.
2. You may be enrolled in PASS (Programs in Analytics and Statistical Studies) that requires demonstration of proficiency in the subject, in which case your work will be assessed for a grade.
3. You may require a "Record of Course Completion," along with professional development credit in the form of Continuing Education Units (CEU's).  For those successfully completing the course, 5.0 CEU's and a record of course completion will be issued by The Institute, upon request.

The course text is Handbook of Natural Language Processing (2nd edition), by Nitin Indurkhya and Fred Damerau, which you can order from CRC Press, or by using this form. CRC Press typically gives students a generous discount when students order the text using the above form (not by ordering the text online).

PLEASE ORDER YOUR COPY IN TIME FOR THE COURSE STARTING DATE.

None.