Natural Language Processing - OR - Teaching a Rock to Read

• hw04: February 4, 2026 https://classroom.github.com/a/78aoV6u5

Links

• Speech and Language Processing — Jurafsky & Martin, comprehensive NLP textbook (free online, chapters 2-6 cover this lecture)
• NLTK Book — official tutorial with exercises (chapters 1-7)
• spaCy 101 — core concepts and usage patterns
• Real Python: NLP with spaCy — hands-on tutorial
• Regex101 — interactive regex tester with explanation
• scispaCy — biomedical NLP models

Heads-up!

• TB Hack Day on Feb 11th! Register: https://seatrac.uw.edu/training/i4tbworkinggroup

Natural Language Processing

What is NLP?

Humans communicate in natural language—English, Spanish, clinical shorthand. Computers need structure—numbers, categories, defined relationships. Natural language processing (NLP) bridges this gap, transforming free-form text into data that algorithms can analyze.

NLP powers everyday tools:

• Search engines understand queries and match relevant documents
• Translation services convert between languages