LING 185A
Computational Linguistics I
Description: Lecture, four hours; laboratory, one hour. Requisites: courses 120B, 180, Program in Computing 10B (or Computer Science 32). Recommended: course 165B or 200B. Survey of recent work on natural language processing, including basic syntactic parsing strategies, with brief glimpses of semantic representation, reasoning, and response generation. P/NP or letter grading.
Units: 5.0
Units: 5.0
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2024 - This is one of my favorite classes taken here at UCLA. As mentioned by other reviews, the content is not easy for people who do not have a good background in computer science. But still, I would say that the content of this class would be worth the effort if you want to learn about the theories. Moreover, Professor Bumford and the TA Isa are super nice and have tried their best to help us learn: The lectures and homeworks are well prepared with slides and clear instructions; Also, they are very willing to help us in office hours every week. Professor Bumford also has a very good understanding of Haskell (the language taught in this class). In my opinion, his lectures on Haskell are better than those taught in the CS department in CS131. For people who are interested to take this class with Professor Bumford, it would be helpful if you could have CS131 done beforehand -- half of this class would be "free" if you have a solid understanding of the Haskell or whatever functional programming language taught there. But taking CS131 beforehand is not necessary, as Professor Bumford does give very clear introductions to Haskell.
Winter 2024 - This is one of my favorite classes taken here at UCLA. As mentioned by other reviews, the content is not easy for people who do not have a good background in computer science. But still, I would say that the content of this class would be worth the effort if you want to learn about the theories. Moreover, Professor Bumford and the TA Isa are super nice and have tried their best to help us learn: The lectures and homeworks are well prepared with slides and clear instructions; Also, they are very willing to help us in office hours every week. Professor Bumford also has a very good understanding of Haskell (the language taught in this class). In my opinion, his lectures on Haskell are better than those taught in the CS department in CS131. For people who are interested to take this class with Professor Bumford, it would be helpful if you could have CS131 done beforehand -- half of this class would be "free" if you have a solid understanding of the Haskell or whatever functional programming language taught there. But taking CS131 beforehand is not necessary, as Professor Bumford does give very clear introductions to Haskell.
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2020 - Tim knows his shit and is very articulate. I don't know if it's just the material, but Prof. Hunter knows how to connect the dots between conceptual knowledge and actual implementation in Haskell. Highly recommend taking this class and professor. Coursework involves ~8 coding assignments worth 75% of your total grade, but gives you the option to drop the first 3 if you mess up even though those are the easiest. Then it's 20% final project (that I opted out of thanks to Corona and 5% mini pop-quizzes for attendance). After Week 5 (CFGs), the theory gets kinda ass lowkey and coding becomes much harder. Tim never directly answers questions on how to write a certain function but steers you in the right direction, so utilize friends and TA to help if you are stuck. Overall would recommend the class, I started just wanting to get an A and move on, but now Tim has made me appreciate computational linguistics on a deeper level.
Winter 2020 - Tim knows his shit and is very articulate. I don't know if it's just the material, but Prof. Hunter knows how to connect the dots between conceptual knowledge and actual implementation in Haskell. Highly recommend taking this class and professor. Coursework involves ~8 coding assignments worth 75% of your total grade, but gives you the option to drop the first 3 if you mess up even though those are the easiest. Then it's 20% final project (that I opted out of thanks to Corona and 5% mini pop-quizzes for attendance). After Week 5 (CFGs), the theory gets kinda ass lowkey and coding becomes much harder. Tim never directly answers questions on how to write a certain function but steers you in the right direction, so utilize friends and TA to help if you are stuck. Overall would recommend the class, I started just wanting to get an A and move on, but now Tim has made me appreciate computational linguistics on a deeper level.
Most Helpful Review
Fall 2022 - This class was interesting, but very difficult. Perkins does a great job of explaining the theory behind class materials, but glossed over the actual programming components of the class (which after the first few assignments can become a big issue). Half of my class dropped in the first 3 weeks. However, I do think the class is manageable if you have a friend taking it with you and if you always go to discussions/office hours. Course Grading Homework assignments 75% (8 total, lowest score dropped) Final project 25% (coding project and final paper)
Fall 2022 - This class was interesting, but very difficult. Perkins does a great job of explaining the theory behind class materials, but glossed over the actual programming components of the class (which after the first few assignments can become a big issue). Half of my class dropped in the first 3 weeks. However, I do think the class is manageable if you have a friend taking it with you and if you always go to discussions/office hours. Course Grading Homework assignments 75% (8 total, lowest score dropped) Final project 25% (coding project and final paper)
Most Helpful Review
Spring 2019 - For people expecting a more linguistics type class with some interesting computational elements and cool coding projects, this is not it. You will use Haskell the entire class, so prior knowledge of functional programming (CS131) is a HUGE advantage. It also spends quite a bit of time on Finite State Automaton and context free grammars, so taking CS181 before would probably help too. Grade is made up of 70% homework, 20% final coding project and 10% pop quizzes. This class is not easy and homework may leave you frustrated, do not take this lightly.
Spring 2019 - For people expecting a more linguistics type class with some interesting computational elements and cool coding projects, this is not it. You will use Haskell the entire class, so prior knowledge of functional programming (CS131) is a HUGE advantage. It also spends quite a bit of time on Finite State Automaton and context free grammars, so taking CS181 before would probably help too. Grade is made up of 70% homework, 20% final coding project and 10% pop quizzes. This class is not easy and homework may leave you frustrated, do not take this lightly.
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