Deeper What’s Next? Looking Ahead, Learning More and Getting Involved Understanding the Tools What’s Available How Ruby Measures Up Bridging the Gaps An Introduction to Natural Language Processing What is It? Why is it so Difficult? Why is it Important?
overawe or intimidate (someone): she didn't like being buffaloed. Buf-fa-lo (noun) an industrial city in the northwestern part of the state of New York. buf-fa-lo (noun) a heavily built wild ox with backswept horns.
No perfect solution exists • Experts often disagree on the results • Fixing one thing often causes problems elsewhere Language itself is a moving target • Different cultures, grammar, syntax • Language is constant evolving • Technological advances influence language
No perfect solution exists • Experts often disagree on the results • Fixing one thing often causes problems elsewhere Language itself is a moving target • Different cultures, grammar, syntax • Language is constant evolving • Technological advances influence language Many aspects are computationally complex • Today vs. 10 years ago • Hardware has advanced, become cheaper
to be equivalent to that of solving the central artificial intelligence problem — making computers as intelligent as people. In short, passing the Turing test...
Demand/need is increasing steeply • The problem space is growing • Everyone has a “big data” problem these days Fun facts about data growth: Photos: • 4 billion in the last year alone, 4x last decade • Half found their way onto the Internet Information: • 1.8 zettabytes annually (Source: IDC 2011) • Increase 50x by 2020
Rule-Based Analysis • Statistical Analysis • Machine Learning Some of the most effective solutions we have today rely on the human-in-the-loop approach, learning from user feedback.
Toolkit Leading NLP Toolkit/Framework Strong support from the academic world (SciPy, NumPy) Python was chosen for its expressiveness, ease-of-use What about Ruby?
know and love with: True Multicore Concurrency (No GIL) Portability of Java JIT-Compilation It allows you to leverage well- established, mature Java libraries from within your Ruby code. Real globals and constants No wait, it’s like this really cool thing!
• Don’t be afraid to try other languages/platforms • Leverage Coursera / Online Learning • Less TV, more books Contribute • Treat (https://github.com/louismullie/treat) • SciRuby Project (http://sciruby.com/) Share • Local meetups • Tech talks at your workplace • Blogs