Text Analytics: 95-865 (A)

Text Analytics:
95-865 (A)

Description:

Many organizations need to analyze large amounts of text to discover useful information. For example, a company may want to monitor how the public discusses its products in social media, or a forensics team may need to discover the contents of disk drives seized by law enforcement. This course provides students with an understanding of common and emerging methods of organizing, summarizing, and analyzing large collections of unstructured and lightly-structured text ('text analytics'). The focus is on algorithms and techniques, however the course also provides an introduction to open-source software tools

This is a 6 unit course. It is offered during the second half of the Fall (Mini-2) and Spring (Mini-4) semesters.

Learning Objectives:

By the end of the course, students are expected to have developed the following skills. Skills are assessed by the homework assignments and the final exam.

Recall and discuss common methods of conducting exploratory and predictive analysis of text information;
Use search engines and common open-source software to perform common methods of exploratory and predictive analysis; and
Apply text analysis techniques discussed in class to solve problems faced by governments and companies;

Prerequisites:

None

Time & Location:

Spring Mini A4, Tu/Th 10:30 - 11:50, HBH 1206

Instructor:

Jamie Callan

Teaching Assistants:

Stefan Hermanek (shermane@andrew)
Malavika Kale (kmakaran@andrew)

Office Hours:

Day	Time	Location	TA
Monday	5:30-7:00	A007A (HbH Interview room)	Stefan
Thursday	12:30-2:00	A007H (HbH Interview room)	Malavika

Discussion Forum:

A discussion forum is provided for students to ask questions, answer questions, and discuss class-related topics. You will need a Piazza account to use the discussion forum. Please provide a CMU email address when you join the 95-865 discussion (you can use other email addresses, too). We will periodically remove students that do not have CMU email addresses.

Instructional Materials:

Some lectures have assigned readings from Introduction to Information Retrieval, Christopher D. Manning, Prabhakar Raghavan, and Hinrich Schutze, Cambridge University Press. 2008. The links next to each lecture provide access to an online version of the text.

Some lectures have assigned readings from other papers, as shown in the link next to the lecture.

Online access to some materials is restricted to the .cmu.edu domain. CMU people can get access from outside .cmu.edu (e.g., from home) using CMU's WebVPN Service.

Homework:

3 assignments that give hands-on experience with techniques discussed in class.

Grading:

3 assignments (3 x 25%) and a final exam (25%).

Grading Scale:

Grades are assigned using a curve.

Course policies:

Attendance, Auditing, Laptops & mobile devices, Late homework, Pass/fail, Plagiarism & cheating, Recording & videotaping, Waitlist

Syllabus (subject to revision):

Date	Topic	Reading
Mar 21	Course overview and introduction to text analytics (pdf)
Mar 23	Exploratory analysis: Frequency analysis (pdf) Academic integrity (pdf) HW1 out	Ch 2.0 - 2.2
Mar 28	Exploratory analysis: Co-occurrence analysis (pdf)
Mar 30	Exploratory analysis: Clustering (pdf)	Ch 16
Apr 4	Exploratory analysis: Clustering (pdf) HW1 due	Ch 17
Apr 6	Predictive analysis: Categorization (pdf) HW2 out	Ch 14.0-14.3
Apr 11	Predictive analysis: Categorization (pdf)	Ch 13
Apr 13	Predictive analysis: Categorization (pdf)	Ch 15.0-15.3
Apr 18	Predictive analysis: Sentiment analysis (pdf) HW2 due, HW3 out	Feldman
Apr 20	Predictive analysis: Sentiment analysis (pdf)
Apr 25	Tools: Search engines as language databases (pdf)
Apr 27	No class HW3 due
May 2	Case studies: Expert finding (pdf) Review (pdf)
May 4	Final exam	Sample final 1, Sample final 2

Advice From The Faculty:

This course is a lot of work. Take care of yourself. Do your best to maintain a healthy lifestyle this semester by eating well, exercising, avoiding drugs and alcohol, getting enough sleep and taking some time to relax. This will help you achieve your goals and cope with stress.

If you find yourself struggling with the material or workload, please ask for help. All of us benefit from support during times of struggle. You are not alone. There are many helpful resources available on campus and an important part of the college experience is learning how to ask for help. Asking for support sooner rather than later is often helpful.

If you or anyone you know experiences any academic stress, difficult life events, or feelings like anxiety or depression, we strongly encourage you to seek support. Counseling and Psychological Services (CaPS) is here to help: call 412-268-2922 and visit their website at http://www.cmu.edu/counseling/. Consider reaching out to a friend, faculty or family member you trust for help getting connected to the support that can help.

Jamie Callan