Note: This page is provisional until the first day of class. Point values and numbers of assignments will likely change.
The graded material for the course will likely consist of:
- Twelve short homework assignments, of which you must do ten. Most of these involve performing linguistic annotation on some text of your choice. The purpose is to get a basic understanding of key linguistic concepts. Each assignment should take less than thirty minutes. Each homework is worth 2 points (20 total).
- Roughly six assigned problem sets. These involve building and using NLP techniques which are at or near the state-of-the-art. The purpose is to learn how to implement natural language processing software, and to have fun. These assignments must be done individually. Each problem set is worth 8 points (48 total). Students enrolled in CS 7650 will have an additional, research-oriented component to several of the problem sets.
- An in-class midterm exam, worth 12 points, and a final exam, worth 20 points. The purpose of these exams are to assess understanding of the core theoretical concepts, and to encourage you to review and synthesize your understanding of these concepts. Barring a personal emergency or an institute-approved absence, you must take the exam on the days indicated in the schedule. See here and here for more information on GT policy about absences.
Problem sets will be accepted up to three days late, at a penalty of 20% per day. This means that a project turned in at the end of class on the due date can receive a maximum score of 8/10 points towards your final grade. It's usually best just to turn in what you have at the due date. Late homeworks will not be accepted. This late policy is intended to ensure fair and timely evaluation.
One of the goals of the assigned work is to assess your individual progress in meeting the learning objectives of the course. You may discuss the homework and projects with other students, but your work must be your own -- particularly all coding and writing. For example:
- Acceptable: Alice and Bob discuss alternatives for storing large, sparse vectors of feature counts, as required by a problem set.
- Unacceptable: Alice and Bob sit down together and write code for storing feature counts.
- Acceptable: Bob is confused about how to implement the Viterbi algorithm, and asks Alice for a conceptual description of her strategy.
- Unacceptable: Alice and Bob divide the assignment into parts, and each write the code for their part, and then share their solutions with each other to complete the assignment.
- Acceptable: Alice asks Bob if he encountered a failure condition at a "sanity check" in a coding assignment, and Bob explains at a conceptual level how he overcame that failure condition.
- Unacceptable: Alice or Bob obtain a solution to a previous year's assignment or to a related assignment in another class, and use it as the starting point for their own solution.
Some assignments will involve written responses. Using other people’s text or figures without attribution is plagiarism, and is never acceptable.
Suspected cases of academic misconduct will be (and have been!) referred to the Honor Advisory Council. For any questions involving these or any other Academic Honor Code issues, please consult me, my teaching assistants, or http://www.honor.gatech.edu.