More and More about NLP

August 31, 2016

Natural language processing is not a new term in the IT market, but NLP technology has only become commonplace in the last year or so. When I refer to commonplace, I refer how most computers and mobile devices have some form of NLP tool, including digital assistants and voice to text. Business 2 Community explains the basics about NLP technology in the article, “Natural Language Processing: Turning Words in Data.”

The article acts a primer for understanding how NLP works and is redundant until you get into the text about how it is applied in the real world; that is, tied to machine learning. I found this paragraph helpful:

“This has changed with the advent of machine learning. Machine learning refers to the use of a combination of real-world and human-supplied characteristics (called “features”) to train computers to identify patterns and make predictions. In the case of NLP, using a real-world data set lets the computer and machine learning expert create algorithms that better capture how language is actually used in the real world, rather than on how the rules of syntax and grammar say it should be used. This allows computers to devise more sophisticated—and more accurate—models than would be possible solely using a static set of instructions from human developers.”

It then goes into further details about how NLP is applied to big data technology and explaining the practical applications. It makes some reference to open source NLP technologies, but only in passing.

The article sums up the NLP and big data information in regular English vernacular. The technology gets even more complicate when you delve into further research on the subject.

Whitney Grace, August 31, 2016

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