CS 8761 -Natural Language Processing - Fall 2002
Instructor: Dr. Ted Pedersen
Office: 309 Heller Hall
Office Hours: Mon & Wed 4:45pm-6:00pm, Thu 2:00pm-3:00pm
Email: tpederse@umn.edu
Course Web Page:
http://www.d.umn.edu/~tpederse/Courses/CS8761/class.html
Course Objectives:
Natural Language Processing seeks to analyze, generate, and understand
human language via computational techniques. This course focuses on
empirical approaches to lexical and syntactic analysis, semantic
interpretation, and discourse processing. Specific applications include
part-of-speech tagging, machine translation, and authorship attribution.
Required Text:
Foundations of Statistical Natural Language Processing by
Christopher Manning and Hinrich Schutze. MIT Press.
There is a
supporting Web Site
with quite a bit of information.
There is a copy of the text on 2-hour reserve in the library. You will
still need to have your own copy of the text, however, this might prove
useful if you forget your book, etc.
Reading assignments will be given in the lecture and posted
here.
Suggested Texts:
We will do our programming assignments in Perl. While we will discuss
Perl from time to time in the lecture, there will be a fair bit of
self-study required. As such you are strongly advised to have at least one
of the following at your disposal:
Learning Perl (3rd Edition) by Randal Schwartz and Tom Phoenix. O'Reilly
Publishers. You can get this book from
amazon.com
or most any bookstore. This takes a tutorial approach and is
especially good if you have limited C or Unix experience. The 2nd
Edition is available in our library as an electronic book. The
local Barnes & Noble has several copies of the 2nd edition in
their bargain area for $7.98 (as of Aug 27, 2002).
Programming Perl (2nd Edition) by Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, Randal
Schwartz and Stephen Potter. O'Reilly Publishers. You can get this book
from
amazon.com or most any bookstore. This book is more like a reference
manual than Learning Perl, although it is still very readable. This is a
good choice if you have extensive C and Unix backgrounds. There
is a copy of this book on two hour reserve in the library.
Mastering Regular Expressions: Powerful Techniques for Perl and Other
Tools (2nd Edition) by Jeffrey E. Friedl. O'Reilly Publishers. You can get
this book from
amazon.com , or any other bookstore. This is an in-depth treatment of
regular expressions in Perl and is the best available reference on this
topic. You can get an electronic copy of the 1st Edition of this book
from the UMD library.
There are two other textbooks on 2-hour reserve in the library.
The first is by Daniel Jurafsky and James Martin, Speech and Language
Processing. The second is by Eugene Charniak, Statistical Language
Learning. Both are excellent textbooks. The Charniak book focuses
on empirical methods and is an excellent complement to our required text.
The Jurafsky and Martin book is more general in nature and includes some
discussion of speech processing.
Prerequisites:
This class is only open to currently enrolled first-year CS graduate
students.
Grading Basis:
- Quizzes : 10%
- Programming Assignments : 20%
- Final Project : 20%
- Midterm Exam : 25% (TBA)
- Final Exam : 25% (Monday, December 16, 4-5:55pm)
Grading Scale:
- 93 - 100 = A, 90 - 92 = A-
- 87 - 89 = B+, 83 - 86 = B, 80 - 82 = B -
- 77 - 79 = C+, 73 - 76 = C, 70 - 72 = C -
- 67 - 69 = D+, 63 - 66 = D, 60 - 62 : D -
- 0 - 59 = F
Programming Assignments:
Programming assignments are to be completed in Perl and must be
submitted on time. Late work is not accepted and will result in a score
of zero for that assignment. You must use the web drop link on the class
web page to turn in assignments.
Each programming assignment is worth 10 points. There will be 3-5
programming assignments.
All programming assignments are individual. You are expected to write your
own code. If you turn in code that is not your own (e.g., code taken from
a book or online archive, code written by a colleague or classmate, etc) I
reserve the right to give you a failing grade for the semester.
Final Project:
You will be assigned to a team and given a challenging problem in natural
language processing to tackle. You must deliver a software solution and a
final report that includes a discussion of your team's solution, an
evaluation of its effectiveness, and a survey of related work. All teams
will work on the same problem and we will have a comparative evaluation
to see how well each team fares relative to the others.
You are expected to collaborate and work closely with your teammates. You
may not collaborate with anyone outside of your team for any reason. All
members of a team will receive the same grade. Your team must produce
original work. Any type of plagiarism, whether it is deliberate or
accidental, will be dealt with harshly.
Exams:
All exams are closed-note, closed-book. You must take exams at the
scheduled time and place. Exams will not be given early. Make-up exams
will only be offered in the event of documented personal
emergencies. The final exam must be taken at the date and time as
determined by the official university schedule (Monday, December 16).
Quizzes
All quizzes are closed-note, closed-book. They may cover any topic
discussed in the lecture or included in the assigned readings. They will
not be announced ahead of time. If you are not in the lecture at the time
the quiz is given you will receive a 0. Your low quiz score will be
dropped. We will have at least 8 but no more than 12 quizzes. Each quiz
will be worth 10 points.
Lecture Notes:
After dutifully posting lecture notes for a few classes, I have concluded
that it isn't especially helpful, and that it might actually be a
bad thing. In some cases the availability of online lecture notes clearly
acts as a deterrent to attending lecture and/or taking careful notes.
Since these are important skills that you should develop and hone while in
school, I won't be posting or distributing my lecture notes.
However, if you have some temporary or permanent disability that affects
your ability to take notes then please let me know and I will make
alternate arrangements with you.
Equal Access:
If you have any disability (either permanent or temporary) that might
affect your ability to perform in this class, please inform me at the
start of the semester or as soon as you learn of such a condition. I may
adapt methods, materials, or testing so that you can participate
equitably. To learn about the services that UMD provides to students with
disabilities, contact the Access Center, 138 Kplz, phone 8217 or visit
their
web page.
By:
Ted Pedersen
- tpederse@umn.edu