Course Info for Ling773/CMSC828R, Spring 2009

Course Info for Ling773/CMSC828R, Spring 2009
Computational Linguistics II

Class mailing list

Students should be on the class mailing list. Messages are archived on a weekly basis.

Students are encouraged to read and participate in the class discussion forum.

Also, in the past some students in this class have used del.icio.us to tag Web pages that are related to this course -- see http://del.icio.us/tag/cmsc773. Please feel free to contribute!

Essentials

Instructor:
Philip Resnik.
TA:
None.
Location and time of the class:
Computer Science Instructional Center (CSIC), Room 1121, Wednesdays 1:30-4pm.
Text:
Weekly readings listed in the schedule of topics, mostly from Christopher D. Manning and Hinrich Schuetze, Foundations of Statistical Natural Language Processing. Note that from UMD IP addresses, it is possible to download book chapters. (But I recommend you buy the book anyway -- it's good to have!)
Syllabus:
See the schedule of topics.
Office hours:
Philip Resnik: by appointment.

What's the course about?

This is the second semester in our graduate sequence in computational linguistics. Students are assumed to have taken the first semester (Ling645/CMSC723) or equivalent, and this class will provide foundations for advanced seminars in computational linguistics. Students are expected to be able to know how to program, and will exercise this ability periodically in homework assignments and/or projects.

The topics we'll cover are intended to get students up to speed on necessary background in order to understand and perform cutting-edge research in natural language processing, which requires a strong grounding in statistical NLP models and methods. Some of the topics are in the same areas as in Computational Linguistics I, but we will go deeper. As always, the syllabus is subject to revision; however, it will follow Manning and Schuetze's textbook relatively closely at least in early parts of the course.

Please feel free to contact me with any questions, and feel free to suggest the course to anyone who might be interested.

See the schedule of topics for class-by-class plans.

How will the course be graded?:

Students will be evaluated on their ability to master the content of the material in the course and to think critically about ideas presented to them.

Exams (50%): There will be a midterm exam and a final exam. CS MS comp grade (AI area) will be based entirely on the average of the two exams.
Class assignments/projects (45%): There will be periodic homework assignments and/or projects that may involve on-paper exercises (e.g. walking through algorithms or calculations), hands-on programming, or analysis of data.
Class participation (5%): Showing up for class, demonstrating preparedness, and contributing to class discussions. Of these, the last one matters most. I include it in the grade because it's much better for everyone to have students engaged in questioning and discussion during class. (Note: I am also considering creating a class blog, and requiring all students to post at least once or twice during the semester).

Policy for Incomplete Work

Late assignments. If an assignment is late by up to 24 hours, the grade will be reduced by 10%. By 48 hours, 20%. And so forth. Exceptions can be discussed in cases of medical excuses, family emergencies, equipment failure, etc., but being busy is not a valid excuse, and the sooner you talk to me about a problem the better.
There are several common problems I am unlikely to consider as valid reasons for failing to get work in on time. These include (a) failure to manage your time properly, (b) discovering an assignment is harder than you expected it to be (see item a), and (c) losing code or data that should have been backed up, unless it's someone else's fault.
Late assignment exception. Each student can ask to extend an assignment due date by 48 hours once during the semester, no questions asked.
'Incomplete' as a grade. I will not issue an 'incomplete' as a grade except for serious, valid reasons, generally in the category of emergencies. See above for some reasons I am unlikely to consider valid. If you are having problems of any kind, please talk to me as soon as possible. Please make sure to read the official policy for excused absences from exams.