The field of natural language processing (NLP) aims at getting computers to perform useful and interesting tasks with human language. This course introduces students to the 3 pillars underlying modern NLP: probabilistic language models, simple neural networks with a focus on gradient based learning, and vector-based meaning representations in the form of word embeddings. At the end of the course, students will be able to implement and analyze probabilistic language models based on N-grams, text classifiers using logistic regression and gradient-based learning, and vector-based approaches to word meaning and text classification.
Fundamentals of Natural Language Processing
Gain insight into a topic and learn the fundamentals.
Intermediate level
Recommended experience
23 hours to complete
3 weeks at 7 hours a week
Flexible schedule
Learn at your own pace
Build toward a degree
What you'll learn
Analyze corpora to develop effective lexicons using subword tokenization.
Develop language models that can assign probabilities to texts.
Design, implement, and evaluate the effectiveness of text classifiers using gradient-based learning techniques.
Design, implement and evaluate unsupervised methods for learning word embeddings.
Details to know
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March 2025
Assessments
4 assignments
Taught in English
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There are 4 modules in this course
This first week of Fundamentals of Natural Language Processing introduces the fundamental concepts of natural language processing (NLP), focusing on how computers process and analyze human language. You will explore key linguistic structures, including words and morphology, and learn essential techniques for text normalization and tokenization.
What's included
5 videos5 readings1 assignment
This week explores foundational language modeling techniques, focusing on n-gram models and their role in statistical Natural Language Processing. You will learn how n-gram language models are constructed, smoothed, and evaluated for effectiveness.
What's included
4 videos4 readings1 assignment1 programming assignment
This week introduces text classification and explores logistic regression as a powerful classification technique. You will learn how logistic regression models work, including key mathematical concepts such as the logit function, gradients, and stochastic gradient descent. The week also covers evaluation metrics for assessing classifier performance.
What's included
6 videos3 readings1 assignment1 programming assignment
This final week explores how words can be represented as vectors in a high-dimensional space, allowing computational models to capture semantic relationships between words. You will learn about both sparse and dense vector representations, including TF-IDF, Pointwise Mutual Information (PMI), Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA), and Word2Vec. The module also covers techniques for evaluating and applying word embeddings.
What's included
7 videos4 readings1 assignment1 programming assignment
Instructor
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Build toward a degree
This course is part of the following degree program(s) offered by University of Colorado Boulder. If you are admitted and enroll, your completed coursework may count toward your degree learning and your progress can transfer with you.¹
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Frequently asked questions
Learners should be proficient in Python programming including the use of packages such as numpy, scikit-learn and pandas. Students should be proficient in data structures and basic topics in algorithm design, such as sorting and searching, dynamic programming, and algorithm analysis. Students should also have basic familiarity with introductory concepts from calculus, discrete probability, and linear algebra.
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The course may offer 'Full Course, No Certificate' instead. This option lets you see all course materials, submit required assessments, and get a final grade. This also means that you will not be able to purchase a Certificate experience.
When you enroll in the course, you get access to all of the courses in the Specialization, and you earn a certificate when you complete the work. Your electronic Certificate will be added to your Accomplishments page - from there, you can print your Certificate or add it to your LinkedIn profile. If you only want to read and view the course content, you can audit the course for free.