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Natural Language Processing Fall 2023

Imagine a world where you can pick up a phone and talk in English, while at the other end of the line your words are spoken in Chinese. Imagine a computer animated representation of yourself speaking fluently what you have written in an email. Imagine automatically uncovering protein/drug interactions in petabytes of medical abstracts. Imagine feeding a computer an ancient script that no living person can read, then listening as the computer reads aloud in this dead language. Imagine a computer that can do better than humans at answering questions.

Natural Language Processing is the automatic analysis of human languages such as English, Korean, and thousands of others analyzed by computer algorithms. Unlike artificially created programming languages where the structure and meaning of programs is easy to encode, human languages provide an interesting challenge, both in terms of its analysis and the learning of language from observations.

Instructor

Teaching Assistants

  • Yilong (Jetic) Gu, jeticg, Office hour: Mondays 1-2pm, zoom link on Coursys discussion forum.

Asking for help

  • Ask for help on the discussion forum
  • Instructor office hours: Thu 8:30-9:30am (starts on Sept 21); Zoom link on Coursys discussion forum
  • No emails to the TAs and strictly emails about personal matters to the instructor
  • Always post to the [the discussion forum](https://coursys.sfu.ca/2023fa-cmpt-713-g1//discussion instead of email. If you have to email use your SFU email address only.

Time and place

  • Tue 2:30-4:20pm RCB8100
  • Thu 11:30am-12:20pm K9500
  • Last day of classes: Dec 5

Calendar

Textbook

  • No required textbook. Online readings provided in Syllabus.

Grading

  • Submit homework source code and check your grades on Coursys
  • Programming setup homework: HW0 due on Sep 19 (2%)
  • Four programming homeworks. Due dates: HW1 on Oct 3, HW2 on Oct 17, HW3 on Nov 2, HW4 on Nov 21 (10% each)
  • In class midterm: Oct 26 (25%)
  • Participation: Helping other students on the discussion board in a positive way (5%)
  • Final Project Proposal: Due on Nov 14 (5%)
  • Final Project: Due on Dec 12 (23%)
  • Final Project Poster Session:
    • Time: Dec 12 Poster session: 2:30-4:30.
    • Location: TASC1 9204